The Missing Piece
by junior-wheel
Summary: Post-NatM. Thanks to her skepticism, Kiya is assigned to visit the Museum of Natural History every day for two weeks to monitor its Egyptian gallery. It is a boring task, but when she takes to talking to the still Pharaoh... Longer summary inside!
1. Chapter 1

**Full summary: Post Night at the Museum; begins before the second movie. Unluckily assigned to write a research paper on the public's level of interest in Egyptology, Kiya must visit the Museum of Natural History every day for two weeks and stay by Ahkmenrah's coffin. It is a boring task, but when she takes to talking to the still Pharaoh, life begins to get just a little more interesting. And interesting isn't even the half of it.**

Hey guys! This is my first movie fanfic. I love the movie of the Night at the Museum (I could never find the book) and its characters (one in particular, haha, but I'm sure you can already tell), enough to try my hand at this. The first chapters will be a bit slow, since I have to build things up, but please don't stop reading, it'll get better! Please R&R, and I hope you enjoy it!

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Chapter 1**

We are all lonely for something we don't know we're lonely for. My mother would always tell me this when I was a child, and as she did I would always catch my father smiling knowingly and wonder what was so amusing. But despite whatever it was he might have been smiling about, it's true. People spend their entire lives looking for that missing piece. Some declare their quest, some are completely unaware that they are actually on a quest, and some just assume that they'll know what it is when it comes to them. But to find something, one must be looking for something, and be it an item, a person, an idea, a soul – it remains a fact that only a few people actually know what it is they're searching for. The story I will tell you now is about a girl lucky enough to have found her missing piece, and how she had to stagger through the most humbling encounters and the darkest of hearts before she could reach her own.

Her name is Kiya. Her father passed away before she could remember him, and her mother was an internationally distinguished archaeologist who was always flying from continent to continent, overseeing excavation sites and giving talks all around the world. Her children came along with her, as well as their tutors, good friends of their mother, who taught them things normal children their age would not yet learn in at least two years. Because of her mother's travels, Kiya did not know anything about normal school, until it was time for her to enter a university and reach the higher level of education her mother had dreamed for her to attain. Kiya's mother wanted her to study in her alma mater, Cambridge University (whose entrance exam she had very well passed), but her father's parents lived in Manhattan, New York at that time, and so she decided to enter New York University, despite her mother's disdainful protests.

The actual story will begin a few years into Kiya's life as a Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies (MEIS) undergraduate in New York. By this time she had gained three good friends: Horem and Annie, two of her classmates, and one of her professors, Professor Goedet.

It begins.

"Wow. That took just a bit of forever," said Horem, stretching his arms and legs in his chair as his classmates filed out of the room. The History of Ancient Egypt was his last class on Friday, which he thought fun because thinking about Friday after class kept him alive most of the time, but today he just wished he could die already. The topic was the age of the pyramids, which to him was as animating as watching a sink catch fire. It was all too predictable. "If I didn't love my mother..."

"Quit whining, Horem," Annie replied, picking up her books and kicking his foot in an attempt to make him move. Horem was her knight in shining armor just as well as he was tall, dark, and handsome (which he was, and with such rare blue eyes to contrast his genuinely bronze skin), but he could be such a griper sometimes. "Class is over. Now, come on, didn't you say we were going to watch a movie today?"

"All right!" Horem rose from his seat like a mummy desperate to leave its coffin and slung his backpack over his shoulder. Looking lovingly at his fair lady, he reached over to play with her red curls. "What'll it be today? And where in the world is that Kiya?"

"Don't be nasty. She's with Professor Goedet," said Annie, pointing to the professor's desk. There, a girl their age stood in deep conversation with their Egyptian history professor. She could only see her short, dark brown hair and tanned skin, but with the way the girl wildly waved her hands as she spoke, Annie knew it was her best friend. "Talking about the latest news in archaeological matters, no doubt."

"Yes, well..." Horem's voice trailed off into a mumble, though once he received a questioning look from Annie, his smile returned and his voice was chipper again. "Let's have a closer look at our favorite specimen, shall we?"

Annie was correct. Kiya had approached her professor with the intent of asking about the latest archaeological discoveries, but having nothing of _her_ interest in store, he changed the subject.

"Have you seen the news reports claiming that the American Museum of Natural History's exhibits come to life at night?" laughed Professor Goedet. This man was like a father to Kiya. He had been one of her tutors as a child, and was the only one she truly kept contact with (though her other tutors, his friends, dropped by every now and then). It was only reasonable, she thought, to take his class once she entered the university. "Apparently, dinosaur footprints have appeared on the streets, leading to the museum, and cavemen have been dancing atop its roof."

"I haven't had the chance to watch television in a while..." muttered Kiya, "But I did read about it in the morning paper. Isn't it just ridiculous?"

"Yes, I suppose, but doesn't it make you curious?"

"Professor!" Kiya almost scolded. "It is obviously a publicity stunt by the museum. We all know it is hardly crowded anymore, and class field trips are the only visitors they get."

"Such skepticism from one so young!" Professor Goedet chuckled again, "But it seems this alleged stunt of theirs was effective. I have an assignment for you, Kiya."

"Aww, man, Professor Goedet! We were going to watch a movie today!" complained Horem, who had just approached them with Annie. "Not that...hmm...I should mind. Annie and I haven't gotten any alone time in a while."

"Oh, _thank you_, Horem," said Kiya, rolling her eyes. "So glad this benefits you in a way."

"You're welcome!"

"Then it's settled!" Professor Goedet grinned. "Since you brought it up, Kiya, I want you to research on the current level of interest in Egyptian history...by the common people, such as children and adults with no intent in pursuing archaeology. I'm assigning you to visit the museum for two weeks, starting today, and when you're done, I want a research paper on it in a week."

"But...professor, that has nothing to do with Ancient Egyptian history or culture, or any of your classes that we take. And professor, I have other subjects I need to study for!"

Professor Goedet shrugged. "It will replace your second research study, and--"

"I'll take it!"

"Professor, if I may ask," Annie started, "won't that be detrimental to her studies? We'll be researching on topics germane to this course while she is...er..."

"Honestly," said Professor Goedet, closing his eyes, "and fortunately for Kiya, these two weeks' worth of lectures we'll be having is nothing she hasn't studied before."

Kiya shuddered visibly. "Was that when we rested in Giza?"

"Hmm, no," the Professor opened his eyes and pushed his glasses against his nose. "We took it up in Pompeii. Do you remember? And Miss Corvin was so upset because I'd told her it was her turn to teach you about..." he almost scoffed, "Dinosaurs!"

"Hey, hey, no fair, professor! That topic of research is way too easy compared to what we're going to have to do. How is that, in any way, just?" asked Horem with intended sentimentality, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Think of it this way, Horem. You can spend these two weeks studying normally and watching movies with Miss Lennon here on the weekends," said Professor Goedet, causing Annie to blush, "while Kiya will spend her following afternoons in the museum counting children and adults and researching on statistics and other things. Isn't normal class much more interesting to you than statistics and children?"

"..." Horem weighed the positives and the negatives and grumbled in annoyance. He just hated it when Professor Goedet was right: he didn't like kids. Childhood trauma, don't ask. "Fine."

"I suppose that's it, then," Kiya mumbled, arranging her messenger bag so it would bump against her left thigh as she walked, just the way she liked it. As she left the classroom, she bid Professor Goedet and her best friends goodbye and sighed. "Today marks the voiding of my library card. Oh, I miss the smell of old, yellowing books already..."

She didn't see Annie shaking her head as she watched Horem snicker behind her when she left. "Finally. Today, it begins...her social life!"

=-=

Kiya rubbed her eyes as she entered the Museum of Natural History. Ugh. She'd fallen asleep in the transit. A bad move, but thankfully, an old man woke her when she arrived at her destination, the intersection between Central Park West and 81st Street. Shock greeted her as she saw different groups of people in the lobby: there were children with their parents or friends, adults, even some professors she'd seen around campus, and seniors! The museum had never been so alive. Then again, it had been a while since she visited the museum. Where was the Egyptian display around here?

Approaching the circular front desk at the center of the lobby, Kiya spotted a brunette fixing some papers under the counter.

"Excuse me," she called.

The woman looked up and smiled. "Oh, hello. I'm Rebecca, a docent here. How may I help you?"

"Can you show me where the Egyptian display is, here, please?"

Having grown up in an environment filled with adults doing their jobs, either teaching her mother's children or doing work for her mother, Kiya never saw a need to initiate small talk herself, and was a rather straight to the point sort of person. She was only ever lively before her friends or people she assumed knew her well enough for her to act sociably with, such as her own friends and the adults she had grown up with.

Rebecca, the brunette, led her up the second floor and showed her the Egyptian display. It was a cold and dark rectangular room with a few artifacts displayed immediately after its entrance, such as gold and ivory bracelets, necklaces, and other jewelry, chests, and magnificent alabaster vases and busts. But towards the center of the room there stood two tall, daunting jackals with spears in their claws and an archway in between them, leading to a kingly coffin (and by that, I mean it was a great and probably handsome Pharaoh's coffin). Egyptian hieroglyphs were carved into the walls, which Kiya tried to read, but found that they were just random figures thrown together to look Egyptian.

Kiya shook her head in disappointment, but turned to Rebecca. "Thank you."

"Would you like a tour of the display?"

And since no stranger had ever offered their help to her, Kiya knew nothing about accepting kindness like this from them. Nor did she know how to politely reject such a thing. Instinct told her to... "Um," she blinked and looked around the room awkwardly and ended with a nervous laugh. "No, it's all right. But...thank you."

"Sure," Rebecca smiled, turning to walk away. Secretly, she felt pity for the poor girl who, at that age, still seemed nervous about talking to strangers. Before she left, she said kindly, "If you need any help, anyone available at the front desk will be happy to help you."

Kiya nodded and noted in an instant that although the museum was crowded now, the general populace just seemed to pass by the Egyptian display. She was tempted to leave, but no matter how boring the task, it was assigned to her, and she had to stay and find some way to entertain herself. At first she read the descriptions at the bottom of the artifacts on display, hoping that by the time she was finished, it would be time for the museum to close, but she still had an hour to go as she did. She then tried to amuse herself by waving her hands in front of the large jackals guarding the archway leading to the coffin, but realized they would never move or feel annoyance towards her and left them with a 'bah, humbug'. With the first half of the display covered, she passed the archway.

There lay the coffin of the boy King, Pharaoh Ahkmenrah, only semi-covered by a small slab of rock to show the mask of his mummy. Above his coffin there was a golden tablet with nine loose pieces and an inscription at the bottom. She could try to read it, but she was too tired to squint her eyes from behind the stanchion, she missed her books dearly, and she was extremely irate with Horem. Somehow, she just knew he had a hand in this silly project...easy it was, but interesting it was not, she realized. How she allowed the sloth in Horem to take over her in that one moment of weakness, she would never know, but it was definitely his fault.

With nothing to read or watch, Kiya felt her feet soon grow tired and she decided to take a seat. Finding a comfortable position against the wall diagonal to King Ahkmenrah's head, she sighed contentedly for at least half an hour she remembered why she was there in the first place.

"It's completely idiotic," she began, as she was very talkative when she was alone, "sending me over here to check how many people are actually interested in this. I mean, isn't that what actual researchers are for? I don't work well with statistics. I absolutely abhor numbers! ...Well, all right, I don't, but I hate performing tests to see what the percentage of this and that inside what and where is and I certainly wouldn't care to know how many people still visit this place!"

Kiya breathed slowly, then felt something–was that guilt?–come over her.

She glanced up to Ahkmenrah's coffin and muttered, "Oh, all right. I meant no offense or ill will towards you, Ahkmenrah. I know, I know, you were the ruler of a kingdom and you must have had a lot more to worry about than numbers...or did you have people to do that for you? How lucky. I suppose you don't understand what I mean, then. You know, I'm not angry with Professor Goedet, but I have this feeling deep in my gut that says Horem was somehow behind all this...Oh, I miss my books. I miss them so, so much. I'm sure you read books, didn't you, Ahkmenrah?"

Kiya did not look away from the coffin and grinned. "I bet you even wrote books! Or did you have people to do that for you as well? I don't actually care for writing books, but I love reading them. Most people are just too lazy to dig for the right ones, which is exactly why they keep with senseless ones about lions loving lambs or some such nonsense...not that you would know what I'm talking about. Oh, you're so lucky to have lived in such a culture-filled place! And to sit at its head! How did that feel? Standing on one of the many terraces of your magnificent palace and watching the sun shine down on your kingdom, believing it would never fade, that it would last forever...what a grand feeling it must have been.

My days have been exceptionally boring lately. Did you ever find your duties tedious? I suppose not. You were molded to become who you were, weren't you, boy King? Do you prefer to be called Ahkmenrah? Or your highness? Or...bleh. Then again, I think I was brought up to follow my parents, too. They're great archaeologists. Well, my father was... But I'll tell you about that another time. I wonder if you ever found your life boring. That would be rather silly, in my opinion. Really, there is absolutely nothing more interesting than Egyptology. Granted, Greek and Roman civilizations were interesting, too, but I'm sure you'd find those boring. They must have been thought inferior compared to your culture. And..."

Kiya stopped waving her hands around for a moment when the light bounced off her watch and got in her eye. Checking it for the time, she gasped. Five thirty! And she had promised to visit her grandparents for dinner!

Rising as the up-to-no-good Horem did from his own relaxed position in class earlier, she yawned. "Sorry, Ahkmenrah, but I've got to go. I promised to visit them tonight and...did you know they're from Egypt, too? Anyway, it was good to meet you, Pharaoh. I'm going to have to visit you daily for thirteen more days, so don't fret. I shall return!" Kiya declared, and with a humorous curtsy (he _was_ royalty, after all), she left his display and the museum.

It was a quarter of an hour filled with switching transits and moving from station to station until she found her grandparents' place, a penthouse somewhere at the edge of Central Park, which their daughter-in-law bought for them when they had decided to move to New York, of all places, all those years ago. When Kiya's father died, he had left half of his belongings to his wife and his children and the other half to his parents, who wanted to give their share to their grandchildren, but Kiya's mother refused, using their retirement as an excuse not to accept any more money. And, being her husband's and her own sponsors in all their digs, it was only right that they keep half the money he earned from grants for his great findings, for which he was well-known.

Kiya entered the penthouse with the extra key she carried with her and smiled. She absolutely loved visiting her grandparents. Not only were they her only grandparents left, as her mother's parents had died when she was a child, but they loved her dearly (and so did she, them) and they supported whatever it was her father–and now, in this case, she–wanted to do. And if you could only see their penthouse! It was an Egyptian display in itself. Not too pleased with the current affairs in Egypt, her grandparents preferred to keep to the Ancient Egyptian part of their heritage. Vases and busts stood here and there about their great penthouse, their beds were made of linen, their closets were like chests of kings of the great empires of old, and their walls...the hieroglyphs actually had meanings!

Breathing in the air, Kiya smiled. If this place wasn't so far away from campus, she would have taken up her grandparents' offer and stayed with them long ago.

"Kiya!" speaking of which, there was her beloved grandfather now. "How have you been, little one?"

"Hungry and sleepy," Kiya laughed and embraced the tall man, "but it's so good to see you, Baba Zahi!"

He pat her head with a loving smile and led her to their equally glorious dining table. Pulling out her seat, her grandfather ushered her to sit down, saying his wife would come out in a while with dinner. And Kiya would have taken her seat, too, had her grandmother not come out from the kitchen at that exact moment.

"Mama Kiya!" she cried, taking the tray from her hands, setting them down on the dinner table, and embracing her namesake.

Her grandmother, an older Kiya, laughed heartily. "Ah, our little Kiya," she said, "you've finally come home! Now sit down and have dinner. It has been long since you ate a home made meal, I assume?"

The younger Kiya grinned sheepishly and fixed the food on the table. "Yes, well...I don't have the supplies where I live to cook such wonderful meals as yours, Mama Kiya. I usually just eat...er, take-out."

"How unhealthy!" gasped her grandfather, but he ended it with an amused snort, said a little prayer, and dug into the food prepared by his good wife. "Where is your brother, little one?"

Glancing up from her plate, Kiya chewed her food and swallowed before she spoke, hiding the fact that she choked at the mention of her brother. "Busy with...people he likes," she said quietly. "He said he would come by another time."

"Ah, well, you know that boy," said the older Kiya with a hint of sadness in her voice. "He was always the romantic one."

"Haha! The male, the romantic one! What a beautiful and bizarre family I head," Zahi Ganzouri Sr. joked. "And you, little one, we always assumed you would be the one breaking hearts. Has anyone tried to lay a hand on you yet? Anyone your brother has had to ward off?"

"Luckily, no," said Kiya with a scoff. "So there has been no chance to show the world how terrible he actually is at fighting. Haha, oh, Baba, you should have seen him when we were in Antioch. He'd gotten into a tussle with a Turk our age and he was...well, his eye was quite the bump afterwards. If mother hadn't stepped in..." Kiya stopped. Her eyebrows furrowed as she set her utensils down. "Have you heard from my mother? In any way at all?"

The older Kiya and Zahi glanced at each other worriedly. The topic of their daughter-in-law was a sensitive one before their only granddaughter, who had only stopped living with her when she refused to study in Cambridge University and instead stay in the United States with her grandparents. This caused quite a rift between the younger Kiya and her English mother, and ever since then communications were made through them. The two never spoke directly.

Zahi squeezed his granddaughter's hand. "Little one, the last time she called was...before she left for Salamis."

"Salamis... In Cyprus!? But that place...no one is allowed to..." Kiya's temples throbbed as she tried to force tears back. "She didn't even tell me... We're talking about Salamis, for goodness sake! What if she...if they..."

"Don't worry, dear," said her grandmother, squeezing her other hand. "Had anything happened to Daphne, we would have heard of it immediately. The world would have known in an instant."

Kiya sniffed, her eyes misting and her nose beginning to run. She had half a mind to call her brother, but knowing his close relationship with their mother, he probably already knew. A long time ago. And he hadn't told her a word, either!

"I know what is on your mind, little one," said Zahi, handing her his handkerchief, "Do not blame your brother. It was in your best interest that he did not tell you. Daphne did not want you to worry... You know she is as strong as the queens of old. She was your father's Nefertiti. And she is not even of Egyptian blood, as you are, little one! Must I remind you that we are descended from royalty?"

Wiping her eyes and blowing her nose like a child, Kiya felt a smile coming to her face as she heard her grandfather speak. "Baba, you always say that."

"And I will continue to, until you remember never to forget it!" he said dramatically, slamming his fist against the table. "You are nobility, little one! The scion of the great kings of old Egypt, the rulers of the lands of their fathers, who stood proudly in their palaces and watched the sun shine down on their kingdom, who rode to battle and defended their land, our land, your father's land, _your_ land! Your mother married into this family and became one of us, as you, as strong and enduring a woman as our great queens, so worry not, and be proud of your mother's ventures, because she does it for you, my little Egyptian princess."

The older Kiya watched her granddaughter's features change from carrying a saddened expression to bearing a glowing visage and reveled at the way her husband was always able to uplift both their spirits. "Oh, Zahi, how you romanticize things."

"I only speak the truth," said Zahi, nodding sagely, and grinned at his granddaughter. "There. Now, how do you feel, little one?"

Although there were still things to discuss with her brother when they arrived at the topic of their mother, Kiya smiled, feeling guilty about making her grandparents worry. "Like a princess. Thank you, Baba Zahi."

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There! I know it was short, I was just so excited to post this. The next chapter will be longer, I promise!

_Baba_ is what she calls her grandfather, and _Mama_ her grandmother, just so it's clear.

If anything needs to be explained, just state it in a review or PM me and I'll gladly answer it.

Review, please, I'd love to hear from you (and I have absolutely no problem with long ones XD)! :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary: Post Night at the Museum; begins before the second movie. Unluckily assigned to write a research paper on the public's level of interest in Egyptology, Kiya must visit the Museum of Natural History every day for two weeks and stay by Ahkmenrah's coffin. It is a boring task, but when she takes to talking to the still Pharaoh, life begins to get just a little more interesting. And interesting isn't even the half of it.**

Hello again! Here's the second chapter! :) I forgot to put a disclaimer last time, so here it is: All the characters in the movie and its universe belong to...well, the people who made the movie! The only characters I own are Kiya, her friends, and her family.

R&R, please, and I hope you enjoy this!

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Chapter 2  
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Clouds covered the sky as Kiya's Saturday afternoon classes ended, and with hope of Professor Goedet allowing her to take up the regular research study (dismissing her museum visits in the process), she approached him as soon as he left the faculty office with Horem and Annie behind her.

"Ah! Kiya. What is it? How was your visit to the museum?"

"Terrible," she replied, putting on her most distressed face. But Horem was always the more dramatic one, and it wasn't as effective as she hoped. "There was no one there. The museum was crowded, yes, but the Egyptian gallery was a ghost...gallery! There were not even children. And I believe it will be the same for the following days..."

Professor Goedet, who knew her more than she knew herself, hid how entertaining he found the entire thing and shrugged. "Only one way to find out, Kiya."

Kiya, as well as Horem and Annie, followed the Professor as he began to walk away. "But Professor--"

Professor Goedet turned. Kiya stopped, causing Horem to bump into her, and Annie to squish her nose between her face and her boyfriend's back. "Kiya, you know I have a no takebacks rule."

"Yeah, and besides, you willingly took the study yourself!" Horem interjected, standing beside the Professor.

Kiya glared at him. "Shut up, Horem, I still refuse to speak to you. And weren't you the one who wanted this assignment?"

Horem smirked. "I thought you weren't talking to--"

"Professor," Annie said slowly, giving Horem a look that told him not to start a fight now, "is it really that much of a hassle to change research studies?"

"No, Miss Lennon, it is not. It is a matter of having a word of honour, and what one begins, one must finish." Professor Goedet replied, and said to Kiya, "That is what your father believed."

"Tsk," Kiya bit her lip. "Fine! Fine, I will continue with the research study."

"Good, good," Professor Goedet nodded. "Perhaps today, a weekend, the Egyptian gallery will receive more visits. Many have things planned on Friday nights, after all."

_So did I_, Kiya thought, but shook her head, recovered her composure, and said, "You are probably right, Professor. Thank you for your time. I should go now."

"You're welcome, Kiya. Good day to all of you," said the Professor with a smile, and he left the hall.

"Kiya, do you want us to come with you to the museum?" asked Annie before she turned to Horem. "Maybe it'll be fun."

"Uh, no," said Horem, placing great stress on the _no_, "and weren't you just telling me that you had a book to read for your other course that I was going to help you with?"

"It's fine, Annie," said Kiya, narrowing her eyes at Horem, "I don't want to impede your reading time as I have inconvenienced myself. But if you don't mind me saying, Horem will probably be more of a distraction than anything he promised to be."

"Hey!" Horem frowned, but grinned as Kiya turned to walk away. "Oh, and when you're at that museum, don't just check for children! Maybe you'll actually meet someone who can meet your standards! Or just anyone besides us and that one pen pal of yours that you would actually talk to..."

He managed not to flinch as she sent another murderous glare his way. If looks could kill, and Horem prayed every night that they couldn't, he would be on the ground, twitching like a bleeding fish out of water. "I doubt I'd meet anyone," Kiya spat, "because if anyone were to meet my standards–which are certainly not high, you simply perceive them as so because you could never meet them yourself, and I say that with no offense meant to Annie–he wouldn't be hanging around the empty Egyptian gallery of a museum."

Horem raised an eyebrow at the precocious little girl before him. "Are you done?"

"Grr, you--"

"Just give it a try, Kiya," said soft-spoken Annie, and often Kiya wondered how the saintly girl could stand such an awful person like Horem. "Maybe you'll meet someone who's as knowledgeable in Ancient Egyptian matters as you."

"...All right, Annie," replied Kiya, who had calmed down. She felt guilty about getting angry in front of such a nice girl, but Horem... "I guess it wouldn't hurt."

"Oh, I see," said Horem, pretending to rub his chin thoughtfully, "We just have to phrase it in a way that you get some praise for you to listen, is that it?"

"Don't you have a study date to bother? Sorry to leave you with him, Annie."

Annie smiled, simply hoping the two wouldn't fight anymore. They were her best friends, having been the first ones to approach her in campus, and she hated to see them bicker no matter how inevitable it was. "It's okay, Kiya. See you tomorrow!"

=-==-=

Yes, she would see them tomorrow. Or maybe she could just mummify herself with makeshift materials then and there (the museum did seem to have a heavy supply of toilet paper) so she wouldn't have to try not to die of boredom anymore. Really, she felt that at any moment the vultures on display in the ornithology section would spring to life and pick at her rotting body!

This was Kiya's train of thought as she entered the Egyptian display. She passed by the lady called Rebecca in the lobby earlier, and, having been struck (not that she would ever admit it out loud) by Horem's subtly calling her antisocial, she had smiled at the woman, who very kindly smiled back. She was quite happy about her progress until she realized there was no one in the Egyptian gallery again.

"Ahkmenrah, I'm back!" she called out jocosely, as Kiya also knew how to be jocose when she was alone, and waved at the two Jackals guarding the Pharaoh's coffin as she passed them. "Hello, boys."

The golden tablet was still in its place and Ahkmenrah's coffin still looked the same, but...the slab covering his coffin seemed to have moved. Unless her body already knew it was going to be insanely bored and began to send her visions and hallucinations, a theory she doubted somewhat. The stanchions blocking her way to the coffin also seemed out of place. Had someone come here before she did? Realizing she would never find out, she took her seat diagonal to Ahkmenrah's head and took out a book from her bag. Yesterday, she'd only had notebooks (so there was nothing to read), but today she was prepared. The small book on religion in her hands was very interesting, and she believed that despite her body believing that she would be bored in a few moments, she opened the book.

She believed wrong.

The book was tiny and she had started reading it in the transit already, so in half an hour she was finished with it and had nothing to do. Tomorrow, she would remember to bring her laptop.

"Well, Ahkmenrah, it's just you and me again," she said. "And your jackal friends, but they're less mobile than you apparently are. Speaking of friends, mine are so silly. Well, not Annie. Oh, you don't know about my friends yet, do you? I have...well, I have only three. I have one more, an Egyptology graduate I correspond with, but I haven't heard from her in two weeks, so I'll focus on my friends here. One is our Ancient Egyptian History professor, Professor Goedet. I grew up beside him because he was our tutor, though sometimes he would leave and take breaks to teach others in the New York University, where I study now. He is one of the reasons I decided to study here instead of in Cambridge, the other being my grandparents. But you know about my grandparents already, don't you? I remember telling you they were Egyptian...but they really don't like the current situation in Egypt, so they decided to move here. Why they didn't go to England instead, where it's more peaceful, I don't know. Had they stayed there, I probably would have studied in Cambridge.

Anyway, on to the rest of my friends! I met Annie on our first day in campus. I thought she would be snobbish, but the moment she opened her mouth I knew I wanted her to be a friend of mine. And it happened, no matter how odd I am sometimes, though she is the only girl friend of mine that I've seen. She is so kind, she is always sweet, and though sometimes it can get sickening, at least I know it isn't pretence. Horem, on the other hand...he has always been around, and when I met Annie he was there, too, so we all decided to hang out together. And now we're best friends! Yes, even Horem, though he can be the most annoying idiot in the universe when he wants to be! Still, I know he's a good person because he...well, he befriended me, didn't he? So he has to be a good person. But he can be so secretive sometimes...and he thinks it's for my own benefit, but if he just told me, then I wouldn't have been so..."

Kiya shook her head again. "Sorry. I bet if I were your subject in the past, you would have had my lips torn from my face because I'm so talkative. Although records say you were a good king. Were you? Professor Goedet insists you are, but then he always insists on seeing the best in people... Did you see the best in people? You were murdered...well, many say you died of some disease or some other thing, but we both know you were killed, don't we? Feel free to correct me any time. I feel a bit stupid assuming things I don't honestly have proof for. But let's pretend you were killed. Did you know you were going to be? Did everyone know? Why would anyone let it happen if, by all records, you were a good king? Or were you a puppet king, controlled by your older Grand Vizier?"

Sighing, Kiya leaned her head back against the wall. "I suppose we'll never know..." And she fell asleep.

An hour passed, and still, no one had come. Of course, Kiya didn't know this as she was snoring in her little spot, but I just thought you would like to know. A few more minutes passed and it was the museum's closing time. It was during this time that the night watchman took over his duty and inspected the museum, making sure no one was still inside as the sun set on the great building.

The night watchman's name was Larry Daley, and Larry would not have seen Kiya sleeping in her spot had her leg not slumped down across the floor and stood out from the room's otherwise dark gold theme. He snapped, making his flashlight turn itself on, and shone it on Kiya's face. Seeing red from under her eyelids, Kiya stirred and opened her eyes.

"Ahh!" she cried, then shielded her eyes with her hand in an instant. "Please, put that away..."

"Oh, sorry," said Larry, pointing his flashlight somewhere else, "It's closing time already."

That voice...it was familiar to Kiya. Standing up, she came closer to him and inspected his face. He backed away, giving her an odd look as she did, and she stopped once she noticed it. "I apologise. Mr. Daley?"

Larry's eyebrows furrowed, and he looked from side to side. "Do I know you?"

"I babysat your son...Nick, in my first year in NYU. Kiya? My name was Kiya? You don't remember, Mr. Daley?"

Larry shook his head, his brows still furrowed. No, of course he didn't remember her first year in her university. She remembered, however, how Horem dared her to do it, taunting her by saying she was incapable of manual labor.

"Don paid me?" she continued trying to remind him of who she was, "He and, um, Erica, the mother of your son, went out, and we met whenever you...came to pick him up when it was your turn to have him over?"

"Oh! Right," Larry nodded, pretending to remember her. What? He had a really bad memory for names! Columbus could attest to that. "Right, Kiya! Yeah. Mmhmm. So, listen, Kiya, you kind of have to go. It's closing time already and I have to lock up...unless you want to hang out with Ahkmenrah and his jackal buddies all night."

"I'd be all right, I think," Kiya said, in an attempt to be pleasant, but she was so nervous that she said it without a smile. "The Pharaoh is a very good listener."

Larry gave her a horrified look.

"I - I was just kidding," she tried to save and succeeded, she knew, unlike her attempt at a joke, because Larry let out a sigh of relief. "I'm sleepy is all. Thank you, Mr. Daley, I'll leave now."

"...Okay," he called out after her, staying behind to raise his eyebrow at his Pharaoh friend's coffin. "Get home safely, don't drive on your own!"

Kiya giggled to herself as she left the museum. Did Mr. Daley think she was drunk? She hadn't heard such a hilarious thing in a long while...and she hadn't talked so much since she was a child, too. Interesting how the dead managed to make her talk more than the living ever could.

=-==-==-

Having started on homework for her other courses the night before, Kiya awoke late the next morning. She stumbled out of bed as she saw the time: ten o' clock! Three hours late for church! She groaned and, taking quickest shower of her life, borrowed Horem's bicycle to a pre-noon Mass. A hideous mess whenever she was in a rush, Kiya hid behind the last pew and left once the blessing was given.

The undergraduate looked up to the library building as she arrived there by bike, wondering what she was finally going to get to read that day. Would she go back to religion? Or would she concentrate on culture in general? Would she refresh her mind with important names?

_Ahkmenrah._

She frowned and looked around with an odd look on her face. Was that a thought of hers? Kiya moved to lift her body from the bike, but found that she could not. Rather, she could not bring herself to. Visiting the library now seemed such a...transgression! There was still her research study...yes, yes, Professor Goedet did say he respected someone with a word of honour. And she had to prove she had a word of honour! Yes, of course. It was only logical that she return to the museum and check if anyone had visited the Egyptian gallery! Of course.

Kiya's legs ached once she reached the museum. Limp with exhaustion, she feebly waved a hand at Rebecca as she passed the docent guiding a group of seniors and dropped once she saw that she was on her usual spot by Ahkmenrah's head.

"A lot of trouble you put me through, Ahkmenrah," she panted, holding her chest and catching her breath. "But I suppose it's what friends do...would you consider me a friend if you were alive, I wonder? Or would you--"

"_All the old paintings on the tombs, they do the sand dance, don't you know? If they move too quick_--"

Kiya rolled her eyes and took a vibrating cellphone out of her pocket. Horem had switched her ring tone again!? He was going to get an earful...

"Hello?"

"Kiya! Annie and I are going to Coney Island today. If you want to come along--"

"Ohio? You're going to Ohio, Horem? On a Sunday?"

"Oh, yeah, definitely!" Horem paused, waiting for Kiya's response, but when he received none, he scoffed. "No, dummy, to Coney Island in New York! And since you took my bike, I took the car. If you want to catch up--"

"Horem! You took the car? But I was going to drive it first!"

"Let's face it, Kiya. You're never going to learn how to drive on your own. So I took the car, and we're about fifteen minutes to Coney Island...if you want to follow, you're welcome to. Sorry I forgot to call you beforehand. Annie's hitting me right now because I forgot, if it makes you feel better--"

"All right, I take back everything I said about Horem yesterday," Kiya declared angrily, hanging up on Horem and turning her cellphone off. "What kind of friend forgets to ask you if you want to come along with them on a road trip? Granted, it's just a three hour road trip, but it's a road trip all the same, and I've heard people in class talking about it enough to know that everyone in the group is supposed to come along, not just the couple! Argh!" Kiya slammed her fist against the marble floor in anger, but soon regretted it. It was...painful. "And Annie...I thought she of all people would remember, but I guess I thought wrong! I know they're a couple, but does it hurt to invite me every once in a while? Ugh! I can't believe how inconsiderate they are! And how...how childish I'm acting because of it..."

In truth, Horem was right. Kiya acted and spoke as adults did, but she was a mere child. She was still on her way to realizing it, but at the moment she was able to calm down. "I'm sorry, Ahkmenrah. You've seen the worst of me now..."

Standing and looking at his coffin, she saw a blank mummy mask return her embarrassed expression and smiled. "But you're not judgmental, are you? At least someone can listen to me without being a prick about it. Horem used to be like that, and then he felt he had to be obnoxious to get people's attention. And at least you'll never leave without telling me!" Kiya snickered to herself at the thought. "You would tell me, wouldn't you? If you were going to leave? I'd be quite unhappy if you did...not..."

Something went a-rumble beneath Kiya's bellybutton, and suddenly she knew what time it was. Although the dark sky didn't seem to agree, it was time for lunch! "I would invite you to have lunch with me, your Majesty, but I don't think your jackal friends would appreciate it if I took you out on a date without their permission. That and I don't intend to go to State Prison, so I'll return after lunch."

Kiya curtsied with a small giggle, thinking of how shocked Horem and Annie would be if they heard her speaking as they did, no matter how insufferable they could be at times, but decided now that she liked visiting Ahkmenrah, quiet as he was, and turned to leave the gallery.

"Oh!" the twenty-one year old undergraduate whirled before she could and grinned. "If it makes you feel better, I'll explore the museum before I return and I'll tell you all about the people and animals and things you share your home here with. See you!"

Kiya left the Egyptian display and made her way towards the stairs. She was about to turn sharply by a corner when--

"Ow! Oh, my nose!"

--the karma of causing Annie to hurt her nose came back to Kiya as she bumped into Mr. Daley, the night watchman. But what was he doing here during lunch?

"Whoa. Sorry about...Kiya? Kiya, right? Nicky's babysitter?"

"Former babysitter," Kiya corrected, rubbing her nose. "Your ex-wife informed me one day that Nick no longer needed a babysitter and ceased hiring me. If you don't mind me asking, Mr. Daley, what are you doing here at noon?"

Larry bit his lip and looked from side to side, no doubt looking for an escape. He scratched his head, too, but when he couldn't think of anything anymore, he decided to just come clean. "I'm looking for one of the guides here... Her name's Rebecca Hutman, a brunette, has a kind of lopsided smile...but I don't think you'd know her. What are _you_ doing here at noon?"

"I'm about to have lunch, actually...and I know Miss Hutman," said Kiya, seeing a chance to improve her 'sociability' and prove Horem wrong. "She directed me to the Egyptian gallery two days ago. If it helps, I saw her guiding a few elderly guests on the ground floor earlier..."

"Yeah?" Larry held his hands out and began tapping each left finger with his right index finger, trying to guess which gallery Rebecca could be at this time. "Hmm. They should be--"

"Arriving here now," said Kiya, pointing to a noisy group of people behind him. There was Miss Hutman with the talkative bunch of seniors in tow, on their way to the Egyptian gallery. As they passed, Rebecca turned to Mr. Daley and Kiya in joyful surprise, and motioned a 'five minutes' to Mr. Daley before leading the visitors into Ahkmenrah's room.

Entertaining herself with the thought of older (untrained, not like her grandparents) guests entering the display and seeing a newly risen Ahkmenrah much like the fictional version of Imhotep from The Mummy, Kiya held a laugh back and followed the tour. There, Rebecca explained (and skillfully, too) theories revolving Ahkmenrah's death and his being a boy King, as well as other general facts about the young Pharaoh. The guests let out expressions of awe at the Egyptian gallery, after which Rebecca declared the tour over. When the guests cleared out, having decided to eat lunch already, Kiya followed again. Not because she wanted to dine with the elderly, no, but because Mr. Daley and Miss Hutman were speaking, and she didn't want to seem as if she were eavesdropping on their conversation. Ahkmenrah could do that very well on his own and she could just ask him what transpired between the two afterward, after all...

Kiya was about to laugh at her own silly joke when she heard her name being called. Turning around, she discovered Mr. Daley and Miss Hutman approaching her.

"...Hello," she mumbled, with a small wave of her hand. Slapping herself mentally for being so antisocial again, she put on a smile. "Did you, um, call my name?"

"Yeah, that was me," said Mr. Daley. "Rebecca here saw that you were going to have lunch alone, felt bad, and--ow!" he narrowed his eyes at his friend as she elbowed him and sighed. "Kiya, this is Rebecca Hutman. Rebecca, this is Kiya...er..."

"Ganzouri," Kiya finished, having great difficulty in keeping up a smile without it breaking because of her accursed anxiety at formally meeting people. "Kiya Ganzouri. It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Hutman."

"A pleasure to meet you too, Kiya," Rebecca smiled, "Did you say you were a Ganzouri? Are you related to Daphne Ganzouri?"

Kiya pursed her lips together before pulling them back up again to return Rebecca's kindness. "Yes, she is my mother."

"How wonderful!" Rebecca exclaimed, glancing to Larry as if to share her delight, but her friend just didn't catch it and nodded so as not to disappoint her. "Then you know that she wrote a book on Sacagawea? I used that as one of my references for my dissertation..."

"Oh, yes," said Kiya, and she tried to say it as enthusiastically as she could. The topic of the woman who birthed her was not exactly one that lifted her spirits these days. "I remember she wrote about a Shoshone woman."

"Yes, that was it! Kiya, would you like to have lunch with us?"

"Hmm?" Surprised, obviously, Kiya didn't know what to say (again). No one had asked her to lunch before. Annie and Horem, maybe, but even they simply _told_ her they were going to lunch and assumed she would come along. And it wasn't as if she had anything important to do... Her supposed friends were in Coney Island, she obviously could not have lunch with Professor Goedet, and, well, that was it. "Yes, I would like to have lunch with you, Miss Hutman. If Mr. Daley doesn't mind."

"Sure I don't mind," Mr. Daley grinned, "But prepare yourself for one heck of a conversation about Sacagawea. Sacagawea this, Sacagawea that...don't get me wrong, she's great, but Rebecca here can get pretty fanatic...ky..."

Rebecca rolled her eyes playfully before looking back to Kiya. "What would you like to have for lunch?"

"I...didn't really have anything in mind."

"I'm so hungry, I'll eat anywhere, honestly," Rebecca admitted, and the two ladies turned to Larry, who squinted his eyes as he thought hard.

"Italian?"

=-==-=

"Well, Kiya, since you're our lunch newbie, you're going to do the ordering for us!" Larry declared, handing her the menu. She narrowed her eyes at him the way she saw Miss Hutman do a few times on their way to the restaurant, but ended it with a grin and did most of the conversing with the man waiting on them. When she was finished ordering for them all, she turned to (attempt to) join her two companions in conversation.

"...Sacagawea..." was the most she got out of the conversation, so she decided to go with it, no matter how uncomfortable the topic of mother dearest was.

"Miss Hutman," she began, and Larry and Rebecca stopped talking to pay attention to her, "You mentioned a dissertation on Sacagawea?"

"Oh, yes," Rebecca nodded. "I've been working on it for four years."

"Four years?" repeated Kiya, impressed. "My mother did not spend as much time writing her book. Did you really find it helpful?"

"Mmhmm! The book your mother, Daphne, wrote helped me differentiate actual facts from mere theories concerning Sacagawea in the first years of writing my dissertation."

"Oh," said Kiya, almost disbelievingly, "Well, I'm glad she was able to help someone."

"What about you, Kiya, what are you interested in?" asked Miss Hutman politely. She didn't want the girl to think she only spoke with her to reach her famous mother (which she certainly didn't).

"As of now, I'm an MEIS or, uh, a Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies undergraduate in NYU," said Kiya, nodding constantly and unknowingly revealing her nervousness, "When I graduate I hope to study for a Master of Arts degree in Egyptology."

"So you're planning to follow your father's footsteps?"

Kiya glanced at Rebecca. "You know about my father?"

"Well, only through your mother," said Rebecca. "I know he was a great Egyptologist and that they met when she took part in an archaeological dig under him. And if you don't mind me asking, Kiya, why are you always at the museum?"

"Concerning my parents, it's true," Kiya nodded. "I do plan to follow my father in specializing in Egyptology, whereas my mother deals in all types of archaeology. I am always at the museum because a professor of mine sent me there to-"

"Learn more about Ahkmenrah?" asked Larry, thanking the waiter as he arrived with their food.

"I wouldn't think so," said Rebecca to her friend, "she can't learn anything there that she hasn't already learned in class."

"That's what I told my professor," Kiya agreed, "so it isn't why he sent me to the museum. He wants me to perform a research study concerning the amount of people in the public who are still interested in Egyptology. I will search for statistics elsewhere, but I must make my own by monitoring the museum's Egyptian gallery." She hid the fact that she believed it was merely a ploy somehow situated by Horem to get her out of the library. It wasn't good to scare new, possible friends off, after all.

"How's that going so far?" asked Larry, his mouth full. Kiya and Rebecca looked at him oddly, so he held his index finger up, signaling 'wait', swallowed his food, and repeated his question.

"Well, the only people I've seen so far are the group you entered with, Miss Hutman," said Kiya, "I surmise people only visit the display as it is part of the tour, and not because they went of their own accord. But how has your dissertation on Sacagawea gone, Miss Hutman? After four long years of much research, you must have accumulated a mountain of information on her."

"Please, call me Rebecca," Rebecca blushed. "And my dissertation is close to its finish! Thanks to the museum." She said this with a small smile directed at Larry, who grinned back, and Kiya wondered (as I wondered about my parents before) what it was they could be talking about. Rebecca had said that nothing in the museum would help her in her learning about Egyptian history, but now she said that it was the museum who helped her greatly in nearly completing her dissertation?

After a minute of confusion, Kiya passed it off as an adult quirk and nodded. "That is good to hear...Rebecca. I'm sure my mother would like to read it when you're finished."

"You really think so?" Rebecca beamed.

"Oh, yes," said Kiya, and, finding nothing to say afterward, kept quiet.

Larry saw this easily and hated awkward silences, so he went with his usual idea to revive the conversation. "So how's your mom, Kiya?" It just wasn't a very good idea at that moment.

"She's...um..." Kiya bit her tongue and rubbed her hands on her thighs, hoping they would stop sweating. "I'm not sure. She's in a dig at the moment, and I don't want to bother her."

"But she's your mother," said Rebecca, looking genuinely confused. "I think she would love to hear from you no matter how important the dig."

"I suppose so," said Kiya, the words _not really_ in her mind, "But I respect her as a professional and I don't want to impede the...er, archaeological progress she might be undergoing..."

Larry raised an eyebrow at her, also able to sense that it was probably a bad idea to have brought up her mother. He had no idea what was going on between the two, but he did know now, as did Rebecca, that it was a sensitive topic, and he changed the subject. They conversed quite joyfully afterward, talking about a wide variety of things, until Rebecca's lunch break was over. Kiya agreed and said someone might have visited the Egyptian gallery at this time and thanked the two adults for having her for lunch. Despite protests by the two ladies, Larry paid for the food, and after many more thanks from Kiya, she parted with her new friends and returned to the Egyptian gallery.

But not before she completed her promise. She thought of asking Rebecca to give her a tour, but once Rebecca had returned to her place at the front desk, a group of families came in, and knowing that the museum would have earned more income from them than from her, who did not want to insert herself with that group only to feel out of place, she decided to explore the museum for herself. Kiya came upon many an interesting thing (as one expects to in a museum, but Kiya was rather arrogant then and believed nothing there would interest her), such as an Eastern Island head, an Inuit display, a menacing Attila the Hun (and his subordinates), terra cotta soldiers, wild animals, Sacagawea (Kiya wondered if this was what Rebecca mentioned helped her), Lewis and Clark, vikings, the large tyrannosaurus rex skeleton (of course, that was at the museum's entrance) and dioramas containing Mayans, Italians in Ancient Rome, and the American old west. When she had seen enough, she made her way to the Egyptian display and found the gallery packed with the families Rebecca had led there on tour.

She swerved past them and passed the archway again to find three children blocking her way to Ahkmenrah. One of the boys, leaning on the stanchions guarding his coffin, pointed to the golden tablet on the wall behind the coffin. "What was that thing for?"

"It's pretty," said the girl in the group, "Imagine if you were the Pharaoh's queen, then you could ask the tablet from him and he would give it to you!"

"I don't want to be the queen," another boy said, sticking his tongue out in disgust. "That would be gross."

"I bet he was a handsome pharaoh!" said the same girl (and she bet correctly, too). "It says here on the plaque that he died at a really young age, so if ever he rises like Imhotep he might really be...and maybe I'm the reincarnation of his queen and--"

"You hated that movie!" said the first boy, and moved to cover the girl's mouth. "And I don't want to know if he was handsome or not, I just wanna know what the tablet is for!"

Kiya held a laugh back as she heard their conversation and decided to step in. They were children, after all, and she wasn't daunted by those younger than her. "Ahkmenrah's tablet was found with him upon the discovery of his great tomb in 1922 by...um, well, an archaeologist," she spoke. "The inscriptions surrounding the tablet say it is capable of bringing the dead back to life."

"Woah! That is so cool!" the second boy remarked, "But how come the Pharaoh's still dead?"

"Yeah, can you read it and make him come back to life, miss?" asked the little girl, tugging on her shirt, "I think he might remember me as his queen!"

"Don't count on it, Melissa!" the first boy rolled his eyes, and they gave each other raspberries until their cheeks hurt. Only the second boy still paid attention to Kiya and waited for her response.

"Well, I know the archaeologist who found it did try to read the inscription, but to no avail...I mean, it didn't work. Many pass it off as just another Egyptian belief, though some believe only Ahkmenrah knew how the tablet truly worked, and its secret was lost when he was murdered."

"Oh. Wow," the boy nodded, then glanced at someone behind Kiya. "Mom, did you hear that? Isn't that cool?"

Kiya froze and turned. Before her there stood the entire tour group, and it was no doubt that they listened to what she told the boy earliler. Beside them, noting her surprise, Rebecca smiled and stepped forward.

"This is Kiya Ganzouri, an Egyptology undergraduate," she said. "Her grandfather, Zahi Ganzouri Senior, found King Ahkmenrah's tomb on his first archaeological quest."

The adults nodded, showing impression, and so did Kiya. She didn't even know that. Baba Zahi had a few exploits of his own, she knew, but she didn't know Ahkmenrah was one of them. Rebecca continued to explain things about Ahkmenrah while Kiya waited for everyone to leave.

Wait. She was waiting for people to leave?

Kiya remembered wanting people to come and keep her company despite their not knowing her and despite the fact that she would not speak with them at all, since watching them would suffice her boredom, but now she couldn't wait till the guests left the gallery? Well, she did have things to tell the Pharaoh. After a few minutes, Rebecca thanked her for entertaining the children before she led the tour group back downstairs.

Kiya stationed herself on her usual spot and stretched her arms. "I'm back, and as promised, I checked out your museum friends," she told Ahkmenrah immediately. "You have some pretty crazy housemates around here, Ahkmenrah...you should come out of that stuffy old coffin some time, so I can introduce you to them. What do you think?"

She looked up to Ahkmenrah's coffin, which remained unmoving. "I'll take that as a yes. I'd also introduce you to my grandparents! If you would just come out of there, that is. They would love to meet you! Especially Baba Zahi, my grandfather. Apparently, he was the one who found you! And he never even told me. I guess he just assumed I would know. Or I was so busy following my parents' finds that I never noticed Baba Zahi's. My father isn't here now, because...um, I'll tell you about that another time. My mother is in Salamis at the moment. I thought she was in your--well, our, because I'm half-Egyptian--homeland, digging up people's graves as she usally does, but I was just told about her move to Cyprus... Honestly, I hope she isn't injured. I would be very...unhappy, if any harm would come to her, despite what she might think about me for staying here in America.

Anyway, once I become an Egyptology graduate student, I'll probably go digging things up in our homeland, too. Haha, do you want me to get anything for you? A few undead servants, maybe? A fan with which they would cool you off? The climate here should be uncomfortable for you. But you've been here for more than half a decade, so you must have gotten used to it already. Oh, and about me leaving, don't worry, Ahkmenrah, I'll come back and visit you every now and then," she laughed, standing and looking at Ahkmenrah's mummy's mask again and the blank expression on its face. "I know you'd be so lonely without me. Although I still don't know why nobody visits your beautiful coffin. I wonder if you were as handsome as that little girl believed? But if you rise from the grave, like she mentioned...I think I would wait until you completed recovering all your body parts before I did anything with you. Not that I would try anything with you!"

Kiya paused. And then she sighed. "I'm pathetic. And I must be boring you to death. All over again. I should probably go. Haha, look at me, having a pity party in front of a dead Pharaoh who must have better things to do than listen to me. Good day, your Majesty." Doing her usual curtsy and bidding Rebecca at the lobby goodbye as she left, she bicycled her way back to her residence hall. She busied herself with taking down the number of people who had visited the Egyptian museum that day, and made a mental note to ask Rebecca how many more groups she took to the Egyptian gallery that day. She finished books that needed reading for her other courses, as well as the rest of her grueling homework.

It was twelve hours after she awoke when she finished, and just as she fell to her bed, hoping to fall asleep, her telephone rang.

Odd. No one ever called her by the telephone anymore.

"Hello? Kiya speaking...obviously."

"Kiya!" came Annie's desperate voice from the other side of the receiver. "I've been trying to reach you all day, but your cellphone was off!"

"Yes, it was, Annie," Kiya replied, remembering _their_ trip to Coney Island, "Did you need something?"

"I wanted to apologize for what happened earlier. I shouldn't have left calling you up to Horem..."

"...It's all right, Annie. I know he's an idiot. You trusted him, as any girlfriend should."

"Yeah, but I should've known better..."

"I said it's fine. Really."

"Well, if you're sure... So how was your weekend, Kiya?"

Kiya narrowed her eyes at the phone before she grinned. "Oh, it was great. Wonderful. Despite your constant disappearing on me, I found a friend in the museum. So it has been, to say the least, great."

"Ooh! That's just amazing, Kiya!" Annie giggled. "When can I meet him? He must be really cool and I'd love to talk to him a.s.a.p.!"

"Um, no..." Kiya chuckled, "It's a little too late for that. And aren't you tired from your little escapade to Coney Island? Go to sleep."

"What? Is this still about Coney Island? I already said I was soorryyyy! Come on, pleeeaaase? And I meant tomorrow, or Tuesday, or in the near future, not tonight! Please?"

Kiya laughed and shook her head. "_Good night_, Annie."

* * *

There! I fulfilled my promise of it being longer than the first chapter! XD Yep, Kiya's a pretty weird character. Growing up with adults, she felt she had to act like an adult, which is why she talks more formally with her friends. But with Ahkmenrah, whom she feels she needn't impress (since he's...well...DEAD), she can speak informally, like her friends, and she knows Ahkmenrah won't judge her for it (again, dead...for now!) whereas her friends would act shocked and Horem would, in all likelihood, tease her about it.

In the next chapter, our favorite (and only, since the second movie hasn't been shown yet) Pharaoh will finally appear--live! Rather, alive. And he'll have speaking lines. Because Kiya has had wuh-haaaaaaaaay too many. So stay tuned!

If anything needs to be explained, just state it in a review or PM me and I'll gladly answer it.

**Please review if you're interested/if you like it!** (And if you aren't or don't, review or drop a line anyway! XD Yes, there are some desperate people in the world. I am an example.)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary: Post night at the museum; begins before the second movie. Unluckily assigned to write a research paper on the public's level of interest in Egyptology, Kiya must visit the Museum of Natural History every day for two weeks and stay by Ahkmenrah's coffin. It is a boring task, but when she takes to talking to the still Pharaoh, life begins to get just a little more interesting. And interesting isn't even the half of it.**

Hey! Third chapter is heeere!

Disclaimer: all the characters in the movie and its universe belong to...well, the people who made the movie! The only characters I own are Kiya, her friends, and her family.

R&R, please, and I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!

* * *

**Chapter 3  
**

"Kiya! How went the weekend visit? More productive, I hope!" Professor Goedet taught Kiya's last Monday class, Cultural History of Ancient Egypt (which was different from her Friday class with him). Once everyone in the class had gone, with the exception of Kiya, Horem, and Annie, he approached them and asked this.

"Well, the professor is always right...in this case, that is," Kiya replied, "There were tour groups who visited the gallery this weekend. Did you know our grandfather found King Ahkmenrah's tomb?"

"Of course," Professor Goedet laughed, "You learned that in your first year here...and you should have known that even before it! Zahi Ganzouri Sr. is best known for his discovery of the boy King. But where did you learn this? Rather..." there was a mischievous glint that sparkled in his eye as he asked, "from whom did you learn it?"

Kiya stared well and hard at the sparkle in her professor's eye, and was able to decipher it after a twelfth of a minute. With an irritated expression on her face, she turned to Annie, who looked down in shame. "Anneliese Lennon..."

"I thought you might tell Professor Goedet...and don't you think, Kiya, that you should tell us? It is, well, you know, a big step for you!"

"And I have to tell you all everything that happens to me, do I?" Kiya flared.

Annie was easily subdued. "I..."

"Hey, Kiya, chill." But Horem was not. Sternly, he stepped in, shielding his girlfriend from their best friend's sudden hostility. "I think we'd have a right to know when you finally got yourself a boyfriend."

"Oh, really? I thought I had a right to know some things, too. But apparently, you didn't think so!"

Horem scoffed, raising his voice as his eyebrows furrowed. "Kiya, what in the world are you talking about this time?"

"I'm talking about mother!" Kiya shouted, on her toes with fury. She shoved an index finger into her brother's chest. "You didn't tell me mother was in Salamis! I had to learn from Baba Zahi... You knew! Don't lie to me and say you didn't, because you did!"

"You never asked!"

"Do I have to ask about my mother!"

"Have you ever thought that she'd tell you if maybe, oh, I don't know, you actually called her to ask once in a while!"

"You think I never tried? She never answers when it's _me_! Oh, I'm sorry, Miss Ganzouri, but your mother's in a meeting! So sorry, Miss Ganzouri, but your mother's giving a speech at the moment! _My deepest apologies_, Miss Ganzouri, but your mother has blocked all calls from you since you disgraced yourself by dragging your brother down to New York to study instead of entering the best university in the world, _Cambridge_!"

"Oh, you've _got_ to be making those up!"

"I'll have none of these quibbles in my classroom!" Professor Goedet finally intervened, stepping in between the two. Motioning for the students and faculty outside watching the scene to leave, he continued, "I'm aware you two have deep-seated issues to sort out, but please, do it somewhere private!"

Kiya groaned at the sight of Horem's face once more. "I don't have time for this nonsense! I apologise for causing a scene, Professor, and Annie, I'm sorry to have raised my voice at you. But goodbye. I'll see you tomorrow." And she stalked out of the classroom, students and members of the faculty watching her as she did.

"That Kiya..." Horem sighed, watching her walk away. Glaring at the watching passersby, he shouted, "What are you all looking at? Get going!"

"Horem, it's all right. You're both just worried about your mom. That's what you told me, remember?" said Annie, squeezing his shoulder. "It's just the same shock you had when you found out your mother went to Salamis..."

"I didn't tell her because I knew she would react far worse than I did," Horem reasoned, to Annie and to the Professor, who raised his eyebrow questioningly. "Mum didn't want her to know, either. Only Baba Zahi ever thinks she's mature enough to know the truth...when obviously, she isn't...that's why she can't ever get a boyfriend!"

"Horem," the Professor shook his head. "There is nothing wrong with Kiya's lack of interest in romance. There was nothing wrong with her visits to the library in the first place. Yes, she may have been antisocial, which is why I agreed to this scheme of yours to get her to go to the museum instead, but you've done all you can. If she finds no one there, so be it. And if she says she has, don't any of you pressure her into telling you. Kiya will only block you out and might even lose the friend she said she has made in the museum. So if romance isn't her primary concern as yours is, Horem, don't make it your problem."

Horem sighed. "Okay, I give. I'll back off. But..."

"I will not always be there to mediate, my boy," said the Professor, "and neither will Miss Lennon. Settle your disputes, and be wise about it. No matter if it is only by three and a half minutes; you are still her older brother. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm late for a faculty meeting."

Kiya walked into the Egyptian gallery of the Museum of Natural History with much stomping, and had Ahkmenrah's jackal guards been alive, they would have watched her in partial amusement and partial curiosity instead of their usual hostility as she passed the archway to reach their king's coffin.

"Did it ever happen to you, Ahkmenrah?" she said as soon as she found her spot, "Did any of your siblings infuriate you as much as Horem does me? He didn't tell me our mother went to Salamis! Tell me why I shouldn't be angry! And then he tries to turn the tables on me by accusing me of never attempting to call mother, which I have, more times than I can count!"

Panting again, she leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes. Too angry to fall asleep this time, she resorted to breathing deeply, and did so until she was calm. Or less angry.

"All right, I'll tell you what happened between me and my mother. My mother...earned her Master of Arts degree in Cambridge University, and when my twin brother and I, Horem, were of age, she wanted us to study there, too. It was only natural that she did. But my grandparents were here in New York, and at the time, Baba Zahi was ill...I thought he would leave us any time then and I decided to apply for New York University, my school now, despite the fact that my brother and I had already passed Cambridge. My brother applied as well because it was one of my father's last wishes that he and I study together, at least until we finished our undergraduate courses. My mother was angry, of course, but I didn't care. Baba Zahi got better later on and is now in perfect condition, but I can't leave the school now that I've begun to work towards being a graduate student...and quite frankly, I like Annie, and Professor Goedet, and the campus, even though I don't really have friends there. I don't care. And that's what annoys my mother so greatly...we only speak during Christmas and birthdays now. And even her gifts have been sent through my grandparents or brother, and...there it is.

But back to Horem. And I'll try not to get too angry this time...why does he always have to comment about my love life? Or my lack of one? Last year he even asked me if I liked _girls_. He just can't seem to understand that I have no interest in _boys_. Annie obviously does, and I don't mean to offend her. She just likes Horem for some reason, and I won't take it against her...but not every girl is like Annie. I'm not even going to fall in love with a _man_ who doesn't approach me first, and even if that happens, if I have to correct him about every little thing concerning Ancient Egypt, I know it isn't going to work out! Last year and a half, before he asked me if I liked girls, he sent me on this terrible string of dates with a few of our batch mates in school. I am loathe to admit it, but even Horem knew more than they did!"

Kiya sighed. "I know it's selfish of me. I'm willing to accept-well, no, I've already accepted that I'm never going to get married because I'm so picky. But I don't care! Because I love Egyptology. I want to learn more about your world, Ahkmenrah, what you really did and how life really was for you...and I'd rather study Egyptology alone forever than spend my life with someone who can't understand my-"

"Hello?" called a man's voice.

Kiya froze in her spot and covered her mouth as she heard his footsteps approaching the archway. Into the second half of the gallery came a fair-skinned young man in a suit, perhaps four or five years above her, whose hair was light brown and whose eyes were a pretty shade of green, like Annie's, but darker and more inviting, and he looked at Kiya with the most curious expression on his face.

"Am I...interrupting something?"

"Oh!" Kiya scrambled to get up from her relaxed and already unladylike position and dusted herself off once she did. Pointing to the door and hurriedly walking toward it, she laughed nervously. "Excuse me."

The young man smiled kindly at her as she turned to leave. "You don't have to leave. I'm just here to see the...Pharaoh, as you no doubt are. Weren't you?"

Kiya faced the handsome young man again and nodded quietly.

"If I may ask, what is your business here?" he asked her, obviously willing to carry on the conversation. "I was sent here by a colleague from Cairo...which I don't mind, as I love anything Ancient Egypt-.

"I was sent here as a prank by my brother, I believe...but Cairo?" this sparked Kiya's curiosity. Someone else-a male-who loved Egypt? The only other person whom she knew loved Egypt besides herself was her pen pal from England, Ramy, but that was a girl. "Are you an Egyptologist?"

He laughed and began to approach her. She had half a mind to run away, but she held her ground, and was a little glad to find that he was only going to offer his hand. "Keith Kashani," he said, "a mere Egyptology graduate. Sorry to disappoint."

"You haven't," said Kiya, shaking his hand. "I'm only an undergraduate. But I do hope to study Egyptology as a graduate like you in the future..."

"That's very impressive, uh..."

"Kiya," she replied, hoping not to start another conversation about her famous heritage, "just Kiya."

"All right, just Kiya," he said with a grin, but Kiya found that his wasn't annoying like her fool of a brother's. "would you like to have dinner with me sometime?"

Kiya stared at him, wondering if it was a dream. Someone she could go out on a 'date' with, and who wasn't set up with her by her brother! Hmm. Yes. She would show him...

Smiling, Kiya opened her mouth to answer. "I would be delighted to."

"Great," Keith seemed happy. "How can I contact you, then?"

"You can find me here after classes, actually," said Kiya, unwilling, for some reason she couldn't understand herself, to give him her cellphone number. "I'll be here for the next two weeks. Is that all right?"

"Oh, yes," Keith laughed, "There's nothing better than to see you in your natural habitat. It makes you all the more real."

Kiya's body began to ache before she could reply. And all of a sudden, her head throbbed, her fingers and feet shook, her stomach felt like it was about to burst, and her heart felt like someone had driven a spear right through it. But worse than all this pain was the empty feeling that had enveloped her, this sense that something was missing...and it tortured her not to know what it was, and at the same time know that the chance of ever filling it was close to nothing. And again, all of a sudden, it was gone.

She only realized that the pain had caused her to lose her balance when she felt Keith's hand on her back, and his free hand cupping her cheek. "Kiya!" he called. "Can you hear me? Kiya!"

"I'm all right," Kiya breathed, pushing herself away from him, "I'm sorry to have worried you. What...what happened?"

"I don't know. We were talking about dinner, and then you started to squirm until you fell...do you want to go to the hospital? Does this happen to you often?"

"No, no. I'm fine now, thank you. And I still have books to read...it was a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Kashani."

Keith came close to her, and before she could react, kissed her cheek. "The pleasure was all mine, Miss Ganzouri."

Shocked for the second time that day, Kiya simply nodded, then left as quickly as she could without looking like a fool. As she exited the museum, she noticed a familiar head full of curly hair.

"Aww, come on, dad, can I please come tonight? He said he remembered that he had something to tell me..." It was Nick, Mr. Daley's son. Kiya didn't want to bother them and so decided not to greet them, but deliberately walked slowly as she passed them to hear their conversation.

"Nicky," said Larry with a skeptic expression, "he's been there for how many years? Of course he has something to tell you."

"But dad, you know he's not crazy like Atilla! It's gotta be something important!"

Seeing the pitiful look on his son's face, Larry sighed. "Fine. But don't bring food this time. You know how Jed and Octavius can get really..."

Kiya was too far away now to hear the continued conversation, but she had heard enough. How odd! Why would Nick want to join his father in manning the museum? It was an even more boring task than staying there during the day! And who were they talking about? She wasn't aware of Mr. Daley having partners in his work... Then again, she knew only little about him, so she could be wrong. But who in this day and age would name their child Octavius?

Managing to shrug it off as a Daley family quirk, Kiya took the transit back to her residence hall and did a bit of homework, as well as note that Egyptologists still visited the gallery, though Professor Goedet had told her that there was no need to do so. She also pondered on the sudden episode she had in front of Keith, and on that note thought of his credibility. He couldn't have been sent by Horem. She'd never seen him around campus before and he was from Cairo, assuring her of that.

With thoughts of Horem's schemes on her mind, Kiya fell asleep.

_"May I see him tonight, father?" asked the girl, and though she couldn't see his face, she could feel her heart thump in fear of his reply._

_"No."_

_"Just this once?"_

_"No. Are you deaf, child?"_

_"No, father, but if I am to serve him, then I would like to..."  
_

_Her father grabbed her by the chin, but even then she could not see his face. "Your foolish brother did not understand this, but I know you are the intelligent one, so I will tell you. Beloved daughter, if you obey me and all goes well, you will never have to serve a human soul again. Is that not what you desire?"_

_"Of course, father," said the girl, like the drone she was raised to become, and left her father's office. She stealthily wove through a channel of busybodies who greeted her as she passed, however, and found herself in a small compartment with a tiny cot and servant clothes just her size. She knew the clothes belonged to a sick servant girl who was permitted to return to her family for the time being. The girl reminded herself to change into it after dinnertime, and she seemed to forget all that occurred to her until she did. _

_Keeping her head bowed at all times, she took a jug of wine in place of his old servant and excitedly approached his grand room. Her fingers tingled as she came closer to his resting figure, until she had the honour of pouring him a drink. Still, she could not look at his face for fear of being shunned, and was content with being his presence. _

_Until he spoke to her. "I have never seen you before. Is Awan ill?"_

_The girl froze and ceased pouring wine into his cup. "He is tired...sire," she answered, shaking, and finally gazed into his eyes._

_By the gods, he was beautiful._

_But Kiya could only see a bright light._

Kiya opened her eyes and groaned. Sunlight. Morning had come too quickly. Who was he? Who was her father? And she, pretending to be a servant? Rubbing her eyes in irritation at the day that had so rudely interrupted her dream, Kiya kicked her blankets off and headed for the bathroom, her irritation increasing as she remembered that she would have to see Horem today.

School was slow (but enjoyable, to Kiya) as usual, and all throughout the day she spoke only with Annie. Horem, who was prideful only as his sister, turned his head away from Kiya as well, and their friend was left to try and not look too awkward in between the two silently quarreling siblings.

Professor Goedet held no Tuesday classes, and Kiya had decided to give up on the begging-to-be-released-from-the-museum venture and simply bid Annie goodbye as she started towards the Museum. After all, nothing harmful had come from her visits, despite the initial boredom. So far, she had made two friends, despite their being adults with whom she barely had any history, but who had kindly invited her out with them (which was much more than her school friends had ever done); she had spoken, though unknowingly, before a fairly large group of people, and met a credible, Egypt-adoring man who might just have reached her standards. Admittedly now, Kiya looked forward to visiting the museum, and the Pharaoh, though quiet, might have been a good man and was now quite the listener to her everyday ramblings. Had he not liked her tirades, his ghost or spirit would have scared her off by then. Nothing of the sort had happened yet, so Kiya laughingly figured he was fine with listening to her.

Entering the Egyptian gallery, she looked around to make sure there were no people, and despite her excitement towards seeing Keith again, found that she was not disappointed by his absence. There would always be another day. Shrugging it off, greeting Ahkmenrah's jackal bodyguards and passing the archway, Kiya didn't sit down on her spot as she usually did. Wary now of anyone entering and catching her speaking to the dead again, she leaned against the pillar beside the Pharaoh's coffin and stood where she could see the entrance to the gallery.

Turning to the Pharaoh, she grinned. "It's you and me again, Ahkmenrah. I've calmed down about Horem; we're just avoiding each other now and it's probably for the best, otherwise we'd jump at each other's throats the moment we sensed each other's presence. In view of that, nothing's going on with me today. I met this guy yesterday, Keith Kashani, if you heard us speaking. He's an Egyptologist! As I hope to be in the near future. I don't know why he was sent to visit you...but he did, at the very least, and that has to mean something. Other than that, I've not been doing anything. I think it's Rebecca's day off today, since she wasn't there when I walked into the lobby, and Mr. Daley might not come till closing time, so I've decided to spend time with you.

Not that you'd be second choice to any of them! It's just that if they invite me out to eat again, I can't really say no because I do get hungry...and it's so funny to watch them joke instead of argue over the little things. They really are friends. Did you have such a friend in your existence?"

"Hey, Kiya!"

Kiya mentally berated herself for lowering her guard again. This was why she preferred not to talk so much around everyone else; once she had started, it was hard to stop until something caught her surprise.

Looking toward the entrance, she found that perhaps it was a pleasant surprise. Approaching her was Nick, Mr. Daley's son, the boy she once babysat on a dare given by Horem.

"Nick," she smiled, giving him a small wave of her hand to say hello. "I haven't seen you in years. You've certainly grown!"

"Yeah, three years," Nick nodded. "But what're you doing here, Kiya?"

"Oh, nothing," she lied. If his father hadn't told him about what she was doing there, he probably didn't even know that his father knew her. "My grandfather found Ahkmenrah's tomb and everything inside it on just his first expedition, so I decided to come visit."

"Cool. Are you here every day?"

Think fast! thought Kiya, and think she did. "No, of course not," she shook her head. "Maybe every other day or so..."

"Oh," said Nick, and he almost sounded disappointed. "Did I just hear you talking to him?"

"U-uh," Kiya looked to Ahkmenrah for help, only to remember that he was...well, dead. "It doesn't mean anything! Ahkmenrah is just a very...good...listener."

Nick looked at her oddly, wondering what she meant. When she gave no explanation to her words, he shrugged. "I know someone who's really, really good at listening. And he's smart, too."

"Do you?" Kiya nodded. "This person must make a good friend."

"Do you want to meet him?"

"I..." Kiya drawled, "don't mind, I suppose. What is his name?"

"I can't tell you yet."

Kiya frowned. "And why not?"

"Because...because. Do you want to meet him?"

Kiya narrowed her eyes at the boy. He had certainly grown secretive over the years. If this were Horem she would have brushed him off long ago, but Nick was a more reasonable child and she supposed she could put up with him. That and now that he had taken hold of her attention, there was really no going back. "I suppose. When?"

Nick's tone of voice took an excited one as he asked, "You promise not to tell?"

"I solemnly swear it."

Nick grinned. "Tonight! When you stay with me and my dad here after closing time."

Kiya's eyebrows shot up. "When I stay with you tonight? After hours? Must I remind you that we both have classes tomorrow?"

"It's just ONE night, Kiya!" said Nick, and rather convincingly, too. "Come on, it's really important that you go!"

Kiya's eyebrows furrowed. In the beginning it had been about meeting his friend, but now it was about her staying with him and his father during the man's graveyard shift? Did those two deal in things she didn't want to know about? Why would Mr. Daley make his son stay after hours? Was Nick only pretending not to know about her reasons for being here? Suspiciously, she stared at Nick, only to have him stare back at her pleadingly. She sighed. Nothing the child could come up with would be so sinister as to endanger any lives...

And despite her better judgment, Kiya agreed. "All right, but how?"

"Great! All you have to do is stay in one of the second floor restroom before closing time, because they never check there."

"I have to HIDE in the restroom?" Kiya asked, bewildered. "What a prepost-"

"I'll come to get you when everyone's gone," Nick interrupted, "Then you can meet him."

Kiya bit her lip, thinking of all the horrible things that could happen (her mother had given them quite the innocence-stripping lecture as children whenever they arrived at a new country), but remembered that Nick was still only a child, and during the days she spent with him, a good child, and nodded. "Fine. I'll be waiting."

Half an hour after closing time, Kiya stood in one of the second floor restroom's cubicles, quite sure she was dying of boredom. Just a few moments more and her previous prediction would finally come true: the vultures in the ornithology display would fetch her remains soon. Would her rotting flesh, posthumously, reek of boredom as she suspected herself to now? Ha ha, posthumous. What a funny word that was. And another funny word was...caution. She could see the wet floor sign from the narrow gap between the cubicle door and the wall, and in big red bolded letters she saw it: CAUTION. Yes, that was indeed one of the funnier words in the English language. The more she stared at it, the more it seemed to morph into this ugly word, and she began to wonder how it could be an actual word in the dictionary... It was so deformed and it didn't look like a very sane word at all!

Kiya felt herself slowly going insane, too, and if all you had to stare at was that one word, you would see it transmogrifying into this hideous word yourself.

"Aaargh!" she cried, tugging at her short hair, and decided she could take hiding in the restroom of a museum just to meet a man who was, in all likelihood, not even worth his merit no longer. She kicked the cubicle door open like Indiana Jones (the leading man of a series of movies she watched secretly as a child, as one of her tutors vehemently disagreed with the concept of an archaeological escapade being such an exciting adventure; it was her dull geometry tutor) escaping to find his lady love-at least, for the duration of the movie-and let a wild battle cry escape her lips as she finally escaped the prison called _the bathroom cubicle_. Kicking the wet floor sign aside too, she rushed to the door and-

Kiya sighed, her sanity slowly catching up with her, and set the wet floor sign right and wiped the cubicle door with a small piece of tissue paper of any possible shoeprints. Calmly, she walked out of the bathroom but reveled in her new freedom, twirling around and around in her spot and giggling, and in all honesty still looked quite like one of unsound mind.

"If they move too quick, oh-whey-oh, they're falling down like a domino...Ehhh-ohhh-wheyyy-ohh, eh-oh-whey-ohhh oh oh..." she sang, forgetting it was Horem who lodged the song in her mind, and shook her posterior along with shaking her arms, something she had never done in public before.

So it was only natural that it seemed to offend a group of men who had spotted her from behind, and rushed forward to attack her.

At the sound of grown men screaming like banshees, Kiya turned, and began to scream herself. Who were those men advancing towards her? Why were they wearing such outrageous clothing? She had neither the time nor the right state of mind to answer those questions, and instead paired running as fast as she could with her screaming.

"Makashulaaaaaaaaaaa!" the leader of the furry-hatted bearded men seemed to shriek, and at once his companions hounded after her more quickly.

Kiya yelped and turned a sharp corner. "Help!" she yelled to anyone who could hear, "There are crazy men running after me! Help! Aaaaahhhhhhhh!"

She cried out as the men reached her and grabbed her by the head, the arms, the legs, and lifted her on her back like a sacrifice to their unnamed gods. When she heard theIr leader mention what sounded like Larry Daley in between the gibberish he spouted, Kiya's eyes widened. Of course! Larry! And Nick, too, who was the reason she was being hoisted in the air by a group of _mentally unstable men_!

"I-I know Larry Daley!" she cried, "he's a friend of mine, the night watchman here, and when he finds out about this, which I'm sure he will, as he should be making his rounds right about now, well...he won't he happy! So set me down now, _please_, and we can say this never happened and I can go home and believe it was just some insane nightmare and that I just fell asleep while talking to Ahkmenrah over at his gallery, and _what in the world_ is that!"

Kiya gasped as she saw, upside down, because that was the only way she could see anything with the position the men held her in at the moment, a terra cotta soldier and a Ming Dynasty guardian lion walking around and staring at the group of _mentally unstable men_ curiously.

"Sir! Yes, you, sir! And the men that I'm sure are in the lion head and butt! Please, help me! I-" Kiya groaned as the man shrugged his shoulders and walked away with the lion guardian. Was there a costume party tonight she hadn't heard about? Yes, perhaps there was, and Nick was going to introduce her to an avid...history fan who dressed up in historical costumes? It would explain the blasting PA system, but... Ugh. Dumbest idea yet. But there was no other explanation for this insanity, and- were those Neanderthals? And those could not have been Inuits that just greeted the leader of her assailants... Unless she was dreaming, as she had earlier theorized. Then again, she'd heard Nick and Mr. Daley talking about staying here after closing hours, so was this what they meant? They were having a costume party? The men below her still discussed things in their gibberish language, and she wondered if they weren't just taking her on some sort of tour around the museum. She didn't look _that_ foreign, did she? On another note, her back was beginning to ache.

"Set me dooown, please," Kiya whined, tired of screaming and wondering where in the world Larry was at this time. Would she ever see her family again? Would she ever set foot in Egypt again? Or was she fated to die here? She decided to let fate take its own course. It was impossible to escape from these men. "Nick told me to come here..."

Kiya saw many other, she believed, people in museum display costumes as the men carried her down to the lobby, where it was actually packed with costumed people and where party music was blaring even more loudly through the PA system. What were her assailants pretending to be, she wondered? They were wearing fur, so they were obviously pretending to have lived in a cold region, but they weren't Eskimos. Judging by their spears-

"Atilla! What are you doing!"

Of course! Atilla the Hun! That was what Nick meant! They were pretending to be Huns! And they were quite skilled at it, too, thought Kiya when the Huns lowered her and held her simply by the limbs. As she opened her mouth to tell them just how much more uncomfortable the new position was, a large stack of bones stomped past them, chasing after a remote controlled car. A...a tyrannosaurus-rex? Then, a loud, wild trumpeting invaded her senses. Was that a wooly mammoth! Kiya shook her head, as if trying to rid her ears of the sound, and closed her eyes. She would have to write her plausible everyone-is-in-a-museum-costume theory off now...not that she could ever have explained the llamas walking around leisurely, or the zebras hanging around by the foot of the stairs... Keeping her eyes squeezed shut, Kiya chanted to herself that it was all just a dream, and that in a few more minutes she would awake in the Egyptian gallery, safe, sound, and certainly not being carried around by Atilla the Hun's men.

But she could still hear the Huns speaking gibberish, and the more she did, the tighter she squeezed her eyelids shut. "Just a dream, Kiya. It's just a dream. We have had less sane dreams, after all. Naturally, this is just our latest nightmare. All a nightmare. It's all just a nightmare..."

"Kiya?"

She knew that voice.

Still carried by the Huns, she dared to open her eyes. He was upside down in her line of vision, but it was him. "Mr. Daley?"

Larry glared at the Huns, who didn't seem to take the hint, before looking back at her. "Kiya! Oh, man, what are you doing here?"

"Nick told me to stay!" she groaned, tired of her position. Waking up now would be...well, a dream! "He told me he would fetch me from the second floor restroom and that he was going to introduce me to someone but he didn't so I left the restroom and then these _mentally unstable men_ attacked me!" she said all in one breath.

Atilla gave her a hurt look and said something to Larry, which the man could still, though vaguely, understand. Larry sighed. "Atilla, I thought you and I already had a talk about this? No limb-tearing."

"Wh-what? No! I mean, yes! Yes to no tearing of any such limbs apart! I rather like my arms and legs where they are, thank you! Mr. Daley, will you please-"

"Larry, is something the matter?" asked a soft voice, and it was the only calm voice throughout the museum. Turning her aching neck to see who had spoken, she gasped. It was a bronze-skinned young man only a few years her senior, who donned seemingly genuinely gilded ancient Egyptian garb she had only seen in books, and he wore a golden Pschent whose wearer, it was well-known, was the one, the only, the famed boy King...

God, he was beautiful.

"Ahkmenrah?" his name escaped her lips.

The boy king looked down to her, his eyes wide, and swiftly returned his gaze to Larry. "Larry, this girl is innocent."

But why did he have an English accent?

Atilla the Hun said something to the Pharaoh with a distrustful frown, to which he replied, "Because I recognize the way she said my name, Atilla...oh, I mean..." he said something to Atilla using the same gibberish the bearded man spoke with, which seemed to make the Hun even more confused.

"Look, Atilla," Larry sighed again, "the point is, she isn't a bad guy and you aren't allowed to tear her limbs apart...no, not even just a little! Not this time. Now set her down. Ahkmenrah, please."

The Pharaoh nodded and, Kiya guessed, translated Larry's words for Atilla. The Hun whimpered sadly and walked away after ordering his men to finally release Kiya. When she was finally free (again), she dusted herself off and watched Atilla go dejectedly. It was such a pitiful sight to behold that she even considered allowing him to rip her apart! ...wait, no, not really. She shuddered and turned back to Larry.

"As I was saying, Mr. Daley, your son Nick said he had someone to introduce me to today, and told me to stay after closing time, but he didn't show up and...oh, what does it matter? Seeing as I'm in a dream, anyway, I don't think much needs explaining."

"Uh, yeah." Larry bit his lip an shook his head. "See, this isn't actually a dream, Kiya."

"I would expect you I say that, dream-Mr. Daley," said Kiya. She understood that she was dreaming. Now all there was to do was wake up, but in the meantime, she could explain her situation to them if they really wanted her to. "But it's all right. I'll play along, and with you too, Ahkmenrah, because I doubt any Pharaoh could have looked as handsome as you do, and soon the real Mr. Daley will find me asleep in the Egyptian gallery, an I'll wake up and know, still, that this is and was all a dream."

The two men gave her astonished looks, though one was of utter bewilderment and one was a shy sort of surprise.

"You think I'm...part of a dream?"

"You find me...handsome?"

"And am I not speaking the truth?" Kiya shrugged. "It is impossible for any of this to be real. A walking T-Rex? Wooly Mammoths walking around as if they're taking a stroll around Central Park? I don't think so. Also, studies say that past Pharaohs, though admirable in depiction, could never have been as pleasing to the eye."

Ahkmenrah blushed and smiled, unbeknownst to himself, and it went unnoticed by everyone else, too, because Larry immediately tried to explain how none of it was a dream, an idea Kiya rebuffed again and again. Before Larry could explode, the Pharaoh put his hand on his friend's shoulder and pulled him aside.

"Larry, perhaps I could speak with her," he said to the night watchman, whom he held in great esteem. "I know she is a lover of all things Egypt. This common ground may help me in persuading her to believe you."

Larry rubbed his right temple in exhausted surrender. "Okay, Ahkmenrah. The faster we can get her to believe us and convince her to keep this whole thing a secret, the better. And don't let her leave the museum."

The Pharaoh nodded, and, approaching Kiya, smiled. "Good evening. I am Ahkmenrah, Fourth King of the Fourth King, and..." he seemed to put a lot of thought into what he was about to say. "Former ruler of the land of my fathers. May we speak in private?"

"Kiya Ganzouri, your Highness," said Kiya, playing along with her dream as she said she would, and curtsied. "And of course."

Nobody paid much attention to Ahkmenrah leading the strange, normally-dressed girl to the open diorama exhibit. Kiya looked curiously at the enclosed Mayan diorama, wondering if those really were arrows she saw trying to penetrate the glass, but ignored them and took the seat Ahkmenrah offered her on the benches at the center of the circular exhibit.

Kiya wondered what she would say to the handsome man before her. It was all a dream, anyway, and it wouldn't matter in the morning, but she supposed she would feel guilty to the real Ahkmenrah in the real museum where she was sleeping at the moment if she treated the dream-Pharaoh terribly. Meaning she had to keep her sarcasm in check. "What did you want to talk about, your Majesty?" she asked.

Ahkmenrah, sitting beside her, leaned in and stared at her curiously. "Have we met?"

The girl's face scrunched up as she tried to conceal her amusement. What a stupid question! Still, she remembered to be polite to the dream-Pharaoh. "Yes, actually. We met outside this exhibit...in the museum lobby, just a few minutes ago, do you remember?"

It was Ahkmenrah's turn to laugh, and he let a small chuckle escape his lips. "No, I meant that I feel as if I've seen you before. Before all this."

"I must be blunt and say that I certainly don't, your Majesty," said Kiya, becoming nervous with the realization that she was alone in a room with the former king of her homeland. It didn't matter if it was a dream; it had still never happened before, and this caused her some distress.

"I must have been imagining it, then," laughed Ahkmenrah, before he took her hands in his own. "Now, Kiya, I want to thank you."

Kiya was growing considerably red by this time, though she could not retract her hands from him. "For what, your Highness?"

"Call me Ahkmenrah," he said. Another reason why she was dreaming-would any Pharaoh have an English accent to match a perfect face? She thought not! "It is how you address me when you talk to me in the day, and...I like it when you do. I wanted to thank you for just that-for speaking with me. I hear you, though you believe otherwise, and I appreciate you sharing with me everyday what you have never shared with anyone, especially despite my condition...during the day. I asked Nick about you...he informed me that when he was still in your care, you were formal in your speech and always, somehow, aloof. It takes great courage to release such thoughts from your mind, and great trust in whoever is listening." he squeezed her hands, and without any malicious intent Kiya thought her dream-Pharaoh had. "I promise you, Kiya, your trust in me is not ill-placed, and I would never ridicule you for taking a more informal approach when speaking. In fact, I find it oddly endearing."

Kiya's mouth was left open when he finally allowed her to speak, but nothing came out. His words were so real, but dreams could pretend to be very real, too, couldn't they? He found her informal speaking endearing...he was drawing that from her subconscious. Of course. Perhaps secretly, so secretly that she herself didn't know it until this dream revealed it to her, she wished for a man who wouldn't laugh at hearing her speak informally, like her friends, and even more-for that man to find her endearing, as he so eloquently worded. "You know, Ahkmenrah," she began, her throat dry, "You make a wonderful dream. Now all that's left is for you tell me that you studied in Cambridge, my would-have-been school, and that that is why you can speak English."

"I did go to Cambridge University. I was on display in the Egyptology department...and I'm not a dream," he insisted, remembering why Larry agreed to leave them alone together. "I'm real. I'm as real as you are, Kiya. But I can only come to life at night, because that is all my tablet allows..."

"Displayed in Cambridge! How miraculously coincidental. And oh, yes, your tablet," Kiya nodded, failing to realize that she'd let her sarcasm run wild a long time ago. "I figured that would come into play some time in this dream."

"Do you mock me, Kiya?" he asked, without anger or pride, but with pure innocence, as if he couldn't understand why she doubted his existence before her now, and already Kiya felt the guilt she was trying to avoid. "I don't understand it myself. As a child, my mother told me that someday, years after my death, I could be brought back to life with the tablet's power. I can manipulate it to some extent, but I, as well as the rest of the museum creatures you might have seen earlier-such as Atilla and his men, Rexy, the animals, Miss Sacagawea, Teddy, and Columbus-are only animated, or reanimated, in my case, at night. But I am real, we all are, and this is anything but a dream."

Kiya looked up to him, her resolve in believing that moment was a dream lost, like the screams of the hostile little Mayan figurines. "How do you know?"

Finally, Ahkmenrah released her hands. But just as Kiya gave a relief-filled exhale, the Pharaoh took her chin in between his thumb and his index finger and gently pulled her towards him.

Still confused, she looked up to the boy.

And in a dreamlike trance, certain yet unsure of what he wanted to do, the boy kissed her.

* * *

And Ahkmenrah finally appears in the story, as promised! I always fulfill my promises. Mmhmm. *nods sagely*

_Don't worry_, girls, neither of the children are in love at the moment (unless you want them to be crazily in love at first sight, which is certainly not the case here). And by at the moment, I mean yet. It's a simple misunderstanding, as most awkward situations are. And by children, I mean Ahkmenrah and Kiya. Obviously. Unless you want me to mean Rebecca and Larry, which would be odd...or Jed and Octavius? Ack! Haha, I'd love to see a Kahmunrah fic in the future. Although Kahmunrah will be in this story many chapters later, when we delve into the second movie! But that'll be done later on. Okay, I've said too much. o.o I'm off!

If anything needs to be explained, just state it in a review or pm me and I'll gladly answer it!

**_Yellowfruit_: Voila, an update! Heehee. Thanks for dropping by! :)**

**_Elven Heart993_:** **Haha, thanks! I've been wanting to do a NatM fic with Ahkmenrah forever but I could never think of a plot before, and being the stupid sort of preteen in those years all I thought about was all romance and no plot! Well, the plot here circles romance, obviously, but there's a difference, I promise. And WHOA, I was thinking the exact same thing (about the years being kind to Ahkmenrah)! In fact, your very words were going to be uttered by Kiya in the next chapter until you reviewed! XD**

Many thanks, too, to the awesome people who put the story on their alert lists! Feel free to drop by any tiiiime. (Or make your presence known through anything other than an alert.)

Please review, and stay tuned to the next chapter! I'm leaving the country in a few days, which is why I made this chapter at the very, very least, I know, seven hundred words longer than the last one. And Ahkmenrah was in it, so...yeah. Heheh! See you all soon!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary: Post Night at the Museum; begins before the second movie. Unluckily assigned to write a research paper on the public's level of interest in Egyptology, Kiya must visit the Museum of Natural History every day for two weeks and stay by Ahkmenrah's coffin. It is a boring task, but when she takes to talking to the still Pharaoh, life begins to get just a little more interesting. And interesting isn't even the half of it.**

Copy pasted disclaimer from previous post: Disclaimer: all the characters in the movie and its universe belong to...well, the people who made the movie! The only characters I own are Kiya, her friends, and her family. Well, some of them.

R&R, please, and I hope you enjoy this! I just had to type it up when I got home from vacation.

HEY EVERYBODY! Yes, I am alive. Sorry, I was on vacation. And eeeeegh was it wonderful. I even saw this guy who really really kind of looked like Ahkmenrah's actor (it wasn't his twin brother, Sami Malek, it was just some random guy who really looked like him). Man, he was hot.

Anyway! I just watched **Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian** just tonight (it's evening for me right now), and I must say, I was pretty disappointed. Which is a lot for me to say because I really, really have no standards when it comes to movies and just go to theaters to be entertained and not to judge, but this time...I don't know.

This is considering that my love for the first movie just predisposes me to like the second one. But...this sequel was just really forced. I laughed out loud a lot of times, but the continuity was really off this time and the script and the scenes were just blah.

By the continuity being off I mean the plotholes just GAPE at you like a BLACK HOLE. In space. I promise. Not much should be expected from a family movie like that, yeah, yeah, yeah, but it seemed so half-assed to me this time. And it isn't just because Rami Malek got like, fifteen seconds of screen time (BUT HE WAS SEXY ALL THROUGHOUT THOSE FIFTEEN MINUTES, GIRLS. REST ASSURED.).

Although Kahmunrah was insanely pathetic, as well as the rest of the villains, at least his story in the movie will tie in very well with the fic's story itself! Yep, NatM 2 will be included in this fic,

The romance between Ben Stiller and Amy Adams was so rushed and awkward that I wondered why they even bothered trying to incorporate a love story.

Anyway (again), just see it for yourself. I'm not saying you'll feel the way I felt about the movie (disappointed). I actually hope you enjoy it fully, the way I did not. There are some laughs to be had there, too, after all.

Although admittedly, it was rushed (I started this yesterday morning and finished it tonight, so it's probably as half-assed as the NatM sequel)...I hope you enjoy reading this chapter!

* * *

**  
Chapter 4**

They shared a chaste kiss, and though it was sweet, it lacked something; it was incomplete, and neither knew why.

Ahkmenrah was the first to pull away.

"Trust me," whispered the boy King as he did, and then sat back to look into her eyes. Kiya didn't know whether it was disgust or curiosity she saw in them. In truth it was confusion, for the young Pharaoh himself had no idea why he did what he had done, and why such words escaped his lips.

"Th-that...that isn't a very good way to gain one's trust, and on that note," said Kiya, finally waking from her own trance (what an enchanting trance it was, she would later recall), and realizing what the boy before her, King or not, had done. She slapped him, though not as hard as she would have any other man, and frowned. "It was very inappropriate, Ahkmenrah."

He held his cheek and checked the inside of his mouth with his tongue for any blood. When he tasted no iron, he looked to Kiya again. "I agree. And I apologise. It meant absolutely nothing," he said, still a mite confused, and Kiya felt a pang of something painful going through her heart. "But I'm forgetting something..."

The pang in Kiya's chest began to grow, and much like her experience when she first met Keith earlier in the museum, her limbs tingled. But now she felt sick, and it was as if some blunt force was poking at her eyes and tongue. Gagging, she placed her hands over her eyes and fell to her knees, conscious this time of her second episode yet still unable to stop it. And again, worse than the gagging and the knocking on her eyes and the sudden numbness of her toes and heels, her heart seemed to tire of itself and let go; as if all the pains inside had finally escaped to run amok through her chest, and she felt like there was nothing more, not even hope, left in her, because she could not find what was missing.

Then, as before, it was gone in an instant.

Kiya held her throat, coughed, blinked violently, and fell sideways to her posterior as she recovered from...whatever had happened to her.

Ahkmenrah, who had tried to hold her still throughout her episode, knelt before her and placed his hand on her still shaking shoulder. "Kiya. What just happened?"

"I don't know," she answered in between swallowing, making sure that her tongue was really intact and deciding not to tell the boy King about the first time it happened. "I suppose this isn't a dream. Otherwise I would have awoken by now...so I'm sorry I didn't believe you. It's just a bit hard to swallow...haha, hard to swallow," she laughed at her accidental joke, then remembered Ahkmenrah was there and shut her mouth. "Sorry."

Unexpectedly, though she felt foolish after because he was the famously kind boy King, he did not mock her. Instead, he smiled-- he really was a king, for when he smiled it was a regal smile he gave, and the room would light up like lamps shining through a thousand chandeliers-- as if he were already familiar with this sort of quip from her and said, "You are very humorous."

"Not very," she muttered, crossing her legs on the floor, "and not around other people."

"That is nothing to be embarrassed about," he replied, sitting beside her, "as the Pharaoh I remember having to hold back whatever humorisms there were in me to maintain the respect of...the respect of my subjects."

"But you were kind," said Kiya, though it was really a question.

"As much as possible, yes. Although a certain air of seriousness was always necessary; this I was taught by my father before he died," he said, and what made Kiya wonder about it was that he said it without the sadness or regret most people mentioned their parents' deaths with. But at that moment she remembered what Rebecca had said, that the museum had helped her with her Sacajawea dissertation--this was it! She had met the figure of Sacajawea, who had come to life because of Ahkmenrah's tablet! If a wax figure of the Shoshone woman knew her history, what more would the actual boy King know about Ancient Egypt?

"Ahkmenrah," she started, startling him somewhat with her suddenly eager disposition, "If it doesn't pain you to answer this question of mine...how did you die? I'm an Egyptology student--or I will be, you see, and I want to clear, at least to myself, all doubts about how you died."

"I know you are an Egyptology student," he said with some amusement, "and I died because..."

He paused.

"I died because..."

_Because...?_ thought Kiya, but she waited for his answer as patiently as she could.

"I don't remember...I don't remember how I died, Kiya."

"You don't remember!?" she gasped, but realized her insensitivity and slumped down. "It must have been terrible."

"Not really. I don't remember. I wouldn't know if it was, really," he shrugged that off, but had a thoughtful look in his eye. "I really can't remember," he almost laughed in disbelief. "I just never thought about it before. After we'd saved, with great help from Larry and Nick, guardians of Brooklyn, as you must know, the museum from its former night guards, I'd had so much...fun, here, that I never..."

Kiya watched him almost pitifully. She'd caused him confusion because of her little interrogation, and though he shouldn't have forgotten, she should never have brought it up, so she took it upon herself to help him forget about it for the time being. At least, until how the method of his death returned to him.

"You saved the museum?" asked Kiya, changing the subject. "Was this when reports of cavemen dancing atop the museum roofs began appearing on the news?"

"I think so," said Ahkmenrah, having been taught what news in this new age was, and television, too, but had never actually seen a broadcast. "Larry had just begun then, and--"

"Hey, kids!" said a little voice from below, and Kiya leaned forward to see two prominent figures from the diorama display come to life sitting side by side in a remote controlled car (the same one with a bone tied at its back, and she wondered where that T-Rex was now), one in Ancient Roman clothing and the other in a distinctive cowboy outfit: Gaius Octavius and Jedediah Smith! The latter historical figure at the wheel had spoken.

"Actually, Ahkmenrah is much older than you, Mr. Cowboy. By a thousand years or two, I'd think," said Kiya, earning her a frown from the man.

"Nobody likes a smart aleck, little missy," he sneered, his already small eyes narrowing to slits.

Hardly one to back down from a verbal argument, she cocked an eyebrow at him. "You're calling _me_ little?"

"Now, now, milady," said Octavius, holding his arms up in defense, "he means no harm. _We_ mean--are no harm. Clearly."

"Hey!"

"Quiet, Jedediah. We are here only to deliver urgent news!"

"Oh, you always gotta dramatize things..." Jedediah rolled his eyes.

Ahkmenrah ignored their usual friendly banter, to which all in the museum were accustomed, and turned to the Roman leader. "What is it, Octavius?"

"The weekly soccer tournament will commence in five minutes!" Octavius proudly announced. "The Vikings request your presence in their team, as you are the only one able to match Columbus's power...besides our liege, Larry, but he refuses to play on this good eve."

Kiya laughed in surprise. "The great Pharaoh plays _soccer_?"

Ahkmenrah felt something creep onto his back, but he wasn't familiar with the feeling and shrugged it off.

"And he plays it well, milady!" Octavius affirmed proudly. He was on good terms with all the leaders in the museum, unlike his wild wild western partner. "Speaking of which, we have not offcially made your aquaintance."

"Oh, yes. Kiya Ganzouri," she replied, putting on a smile for Octavius and dropping it a little when she locked eyes with Jedediah. "A pleasure to meet you boys."

"Men!" Jedediah cried, "we're _men_!"

"Of course. My mistake."

Knocking Jedediah on the shoulder to keep him quiet, Octavius spoke. "Gaius Octavius milady, and this... cowboy is Jedediah Smith. We are well-met."

"You and I are, yes," she smiled at him still. "Erm, wasn't there a soccer tournament to be had?"

"Yes," said Ahkmenrah, having been watching their exchange quietly, "Would you mind telling everyone that I'll be out in a moment?"

"I suggest you _don't _take your sweet time, Pharaoh," said Jedediah, and eyeing Kiya, continued, "'specially not for big ol' miss bittersweet here. Atilla and his friends are getting pretty irritable."

Kiya's face took on an annoyed look at her new epithet before a look of fear overtook it at the mention of the mentally unstable Hun and his men. "Maybe you should go, Ahkmenrah."

Ahkmenrah snorted in amusement, but he still seemed like a king as he did. This was amazing to someone who had grown up with a monkey (id est Horem). "Perhaps I should. Would you like to come watch?"

"The Pharaoh play soccer? Oh, yes!"

Ahkmenrah once more ignored the cold feeling creeping up his back and nodded at Octavius and Jedediah. "Lead the way."

Jedediah doffed his hat off to the Pharaoh, one of the few he felt deserved his serious respect, and stepped on the pedal. Ahkmenrah offered his hand to Kiya, who gingerly refused it, but was followed by the girl to the lobby.

Many museum characters sat around the area with the opposite soccer nets, including even the animals. The Vikings stood straight in one line while the Huns stood, with Columbus following them and Atilla at the head, across them. Many female museum characters clapped and screamed as Ahkmenrah took his place behind a Viking, while Kiya, daunted somewhat by all the attention the Pharaoh was getting, found a good spot beside Larry, who was serving as the referee and the announcer for the game.

"All right, teams," said Larry once all the spectators had calmed down, especially the civil war men, who were passing around popcorn packs (which made Kiya wonder where they got those and how exactly they would eat them), "shake hands!"

Atilla and the head Viking walked toward each other and shook each other's hands (albeit somewhat stiffly, possibly painfully). Larry called it off when their shaking hands became a wrestling match and began the game. Ahkmenrah served as the Vikings' goalie until one of Atilla's men successfully scored one past him after a few botched attempts, and then the Pharaoh became a main player on the field...lobby.

Larry narrated all this very well until William Clark agreed to referee in his place when the night guard tired of his side job. Kiya laughingly watched the night guard as he wiped his forehead, relieved to be relieved of that duty, but looked away and hid her grin when he noticed her. This did not stop him from approaching her.

"Kiya, hey," he said, turning to the only person besides himself who would keep alive through the sunrise. "How was...?"

"The talk?"

"Yeah."

Kiya debated with herself on whether she would tell Mr. Daley about her episodes, which caused her belief in the miracle of the Pharaoh's tablet, and decided she didn't like explaining things to people. "In your favor, not-dream Mr. Daley. I apologise for doubting you before."

"It's cool, Kiya. I didn't really beleieve any of this either...wait, actually, I didn't have a choice, because the first time I found out about this whole thing, I was being chased by Rexy."

Kiya looked at him oddly. "Rexy?"

"Yeah, you know, the Tyrannosaurus Rex that stands in the lobby in the-"

"Whoa!" Kiya gasped, screamed, almost, as the skeleton of a T-Rex stomped past the lobby behind the soccer match, chasing again after the little remote controlled car Jedediah and Octavius were in, with still a big bone--one from the dinosaur's own rib cage, she now realized-- tied to the back of their car. "Oh, yes."

Larry's mouth straightened down to a line (Kiya would later find that it did that quite often when Larry was taking care of those in the museum). "...yeah. Rexy."

"I'm surprised you didn't leave right after."

Larry laughed to himself, knowing, of course, his original decision after his first night at the museum. "It's a long story."

"Does it involve Nick and saving the museum from the, erm, former night guards?"

Larry stared at Kiya curiously. "Did Ahkmenrah...?"

"Not the whole story," said Kiya. "He was about to tell me when Octavius and...Jedediah, was it? The little spunky cowboy? When they drove in and told us about the tournament."

Larry snorted, and his snort was worlds unlike Ahkmenrah's. Mr. Daley just sounded like he was snorting. It wasn't very glorious. "It's actually just one match," he said, "but mostly everyone loves it and comes to watch it every week."

"The museum characters love it, do they?" Kiya muttered in amazement. That creatures such as them could come to life, could have their own will, their own minds, all because of a tablet...it was only her first night; it still boggled her. "How admirable you are, Mr. Daley, to take on such great a task of taking care of them all."

Larry scratched his head and shrugged, still not used to receiving real praise for managing such a variety of individuals such as the museum characters, but grinned lightly afterward. When he'd heard about her heritage, her belonging to a family of well-sponsored archaeologists, he'd thought she would be prudish and stuck-up, even after she'd spent a bit of time with them. But maybe she wasn't that bad. And she'd stopped calling him dream-Mr. Daley, which had gotten pretty annoying. "Thanks. But hey, you're part of this now."

Kiya shook her head. "Part of what?"

"You know about the tablet," said Larry, and if he were a precocious little preteen he would have added 'duh' at the end. "You can come visit whenever you want now, but you can't tell _anyone_ about this. And you've got to make sure that no one finds out about you coming when you do."

Noting the stern look on his face, a rare one from what she could tell, she nodded sincerely. "All right, Mr. Daley. I promise."

"Bully! Nice shot, m'boy!" exclaimed a loud man behind Kiya as Ahkmenrah scored a point, and the girl turned around to see President Roosevelt in his hunting clothes, no doubt the horse-riding wax Roosevelt in the lobby come to life, and took a step back.

Roosevelt doffed his hat off to her when he notice her and bowed, but not in a lowly manner. "Theodore Roosevelt, at your service. You're a new face. Did we get a new modern Egyptian display, Larry?"

Larry opened his mouth. "No, actually-"

"How did you know I was Egyptian?" Kiya interrupted. Other people could never tell.

"Half-Egyptian, aren't you?" Roosevelt smiled, "The eyes give you away. I had a few friends from Egypt. Although I can't understand why they'd make half-Egyptian figures in a modern Egyptian display...unless you are from an amalgamation display, and--"

"Teddy, that's because--"

"My eyes..." Kiya nodded, holding a finger over one eye colored dark brown unlike her twin's pretty bright eyes, and realized that she'd lost her manners. "Oh! Kiya Ganzouri," she said, holding her hand out for a shake, which was accepted, and continued, "I'm not a display."

"That's what I was trying to say," Larry sighed, "Teddy, she isn't from any display."

Roosevelt--uh, Teddy-- cocked his head at his friend. "Not a display...you mean...?"

Larry nodded. "Yep."

"And she knows?"

"Yep."

Teddy had a somewhat anxious look on his face after hearing this, but to both their surprises, he laughed. "Then welcome to the family, Kiya! I assume you've met the Pharaoh? The boy's hardly as bad as we all thought him to be."

"Erm, yes, I've met him."

"Yeah, so Teddy," Larry purposely interjected, "Where's Sacajawea?"

"Oh, she gets along well with the Inuits and stays with them when I watch soccer matches. She did, however, send her cheers to Ahkmenrah."

"Looks like he's getting a lot of those," said Kiya, though it was meant to be a mumble.

"Yeah, the girls all love 'im," Larry chuckled, then looked at Kiya from the corner of his eye. "You getting into that crowd?"

Kiya shook her head again, raising an eyebrow at him, until it hit her. She gasped, sounding offended. "Mr. Daley! I am certainly not a_ fan_. I am a_ scholar_."

"Okay," Larry said, holding his hands up in defense as Octavius did earlier, though Teddy knew the night watchman was amused as he was at Kiya's response. "So miss scholar, don't you have school tomorrow? That's why Nick isn't here tonight."

Kiya frowned. "And he told me he'd wait for me and show me all this tonight!"

"Yeah, well," Larry shrugged. "Erica called and told me he had a few quizzes tomorrow, so I had to let Don bring him home before I closed up. Again, don't you have school tomorrow?"

"It isn't ideal to miss a day of your education," Teddy agreed. "But is it safe for her to return alone at this time of night, Larry?"

"I can take the subway. Don't let it bother you, Mr. President. Erm, former Mr. President...?"

"Teddy is fine, Kiya," said Roosevelt, and with a fatherly grin Kiya thought only Professor Goedet could provide. "Now--"

"Yeahhhhhhhh!" cheered part of the crowd, and the three paid attention to the game once more to find that it had gone in favor of the Vikings. Ahkmenrah had scored the winning kick, earning him a place on top, literally, of the overjoyed Vikings (their leader had gone to shake Atilla's hand, however, which turned out well, to everyone's surprise).

"Wow," Larry remarked.

"Why wow?" asked Kiya.

"The Huns and Columbus win sixty percent of the time," Teddy explained. "This is a great victory for the Vikings."

A look of comprehension passed Kiya's face as an equally happy Ahkmenrah--who seemed to have forgotten all about forgetting how he died--looked back at her and waved, mouthing, 'we won!'

Kiya would have waved back, had the crowd not pushed her towards wherever Ahkmenrah was being brought. It was to the Oceanology section of the museum, where the large whale hanging on the ceiling sprinkled water at the dancing crowd below.

Ahkmenrah found Kiya long after she had lost Teddy and Larry, and tapped her lightly on her shoulder.

"Kiya," he said as she turned, "I have been looking for you."

"Ahkmenrah!" she sighed in relief. Thanks to all the partying, she couldn't find a single museum character that could help her bid him goodbye until he himself reached her. "Thank God. I have to go now."

The bright look on the Pharaoh's face dimmed, but he nodded. "I...understand. You still have your education to attend to, like Nick. But will you return?"

"What?"

"Will you come back?" Ahkmenrah repeated, and with some embarrassing difficulty. Truth be told, he had never had to repeat what he wanted before, which made him somewhat guilty now. "To speak to me. And not just that. To see me. I wish--I want--rather, I hope to see you again. It's good to have someone who knows much about my...our homeland."

"Of course I'll return," said Kiya, hiding her excitement in her voice. Had she not, she would have sounded like a child again, when she still looked forward to playing with her mother's friends' children. "I have so much to ask you about it. To be honest with you, I can't wait to come back already."

"I know you are always honest with me, Kiya," said the Pharaoh, smiling without malice, and he walked her to the museum back door, which could be opened without Larry's help. Much to his relief, he did not involuntarily kiss her again as she stepped outside the official museum grounds.

"Goodbye for now, Kiya Ganzouri."

Kiya turned. It struck her then and there as she saw his face that Ahkmenrah was the first boy she had voluntarily spoken with since Horem. And how lucky she was to have met him.

Wait.

She knew that feeling.

Joy. And it was excitement, and anxiety, and the knowledge. The tainted knowledge that this was all too good to be true. Once more she felt that it was all a dream, that meeting a young man that would be able to answer all her questions--well, almost all, if he could remember the answers--was just something she would wake up from a few moments from now.

But she remembered that light pressure on her mouth, that soft, sudden meeting of his lips and hers, held a finger over her lips, and remembered to trust him.

"Kiya?" Ahkmenrah watched her staring into space and touching her lips curiously. "Is something the matter?"

"N-no!" she laughed nervously, backing away from him. "I was just leaving. Have to do my homework, you know?"

"Of course."

"...Yes," she said with a shaking curtsey, walking away hurriedly. An embarrassing disaster waiting to happen, that she was. "See you tomorrow, Ahkmenrah!"

"I look forward to it," he called after her already fleeing figure. Turning back to the museum, he chuckled to himself. She was such an odd, interesting girl; yet at the same time, learned. Not one like that where he'd come from.

Kiya slumped into bed in relief, having had felt embarrassed until she returned to her university apartment. Hopefully, Ahkmenrah was unfamiliar with the actions of silly girls. And what a silly girl she'd been! Falling all over herself and running just because of a boy...who was only half-alive, she should have remembered!

Although many of the female museum characters had acted like silly girls for his sake, so Kiya supposed she wasn't that stupid.

What she was was very sleepy...

Kiya yawned, rolling onto her stomach and closing her eyes. But before she could fall asleep, a little thought came to her mind, and she giggled like a giddy school girl, something she had never been given the chance to be. And she smiled gleefully, from ear-to-ear, till sleep finally overtook her senses, that little thought dancing in her mind all the while.

Her first kiss was stolen by a _Pharaoh_.

=-==-=

That morning, Kiya awoke like she had awaken from a wonderful dream. And though it would be a few days until she could revisit that dream, she was happy, and took the public transit to school with a smile on her face.

"Walk like an Egyptian..." Kiya sang, twirling in her spot and moving her shoulders left and right as she walked down one of the university's many halls. She didn't care today. She knew something everyone else in that building didn't--and would never--know. They could bump her and give her odd looks, especially since she was known for being the outgoing Horem Ganzouri's stuck-up bookish introvert sister, but they were out of the loop, whereas she had spoken to a pharaoh! And the 26th president of the country she was currently living in. And the father of the harbinger of the Pax Romana (though he was reduced to being a messenger, at least he still had his manners)! Ha ha. Ha.

"What's going on with you?" asked a normally annoying--but not today, because she couldn't care less--voice, beside her as its owner caught up with her. "Are you high or something?"

"Oh, hello, Horem," said Kiya quite cordially, considering her outburst the day before, "You sound agitated. Is something wrong?"

"Well, yeah, if your sister was waltzing around school, knocking people over with her stuff with nary a care in the world, I think you'd be pretty agitated, too."

"Oh, my," Kiya shook her head, pretending to understand his plight. "Then I am lucky not to have a sister like _that_."

"Kiya, what in the--"

"Hey, guys!" Annie greeted the fraternal twins with her usual sunny disposition, only to be surprised when she saw Kiya, unusually, returning it. Being the nice girl she was, however, she didn't question it. "Kiya, I'm so glad to see you're happy today!"

"Yes, hasn't it been a wonderful morning?"

"I'd say it's been really weird," Horem muttered. Annie shook her head at him, telling him to be quiet.

"Yes. Well, I should be going," Kiya walked past Annie towards her assigned classroom. "My next class awaits. See you both at lunch!"

"Okay, Annie, look me in the eye and tell me you didn't find that weird," said Horem, watching his sister prance away. "She's actually_ happy_!"

Annie sighed. "Isn't that what you should want for your sister? I mean, shouldn't you be happy about it?"

"Not if I don't know why!"

"Ah, good morning, Horem. Miss Lennon. Shouldn't you be getting to class? I passed by Kiya on my way, and--"

"Wasn't she acting different? Wasn't it weird?" asked Horem immediately, closing in on a greeting Professor Goedet. "Tell me I'm not the only one who thinks it's freaky."

"She was unusually cheerful when we met," said the Professor thoughtfully, "but I find nothing wrong with it. Perhaps your little museum scheme worked."

"That's it!" exclaimed Annie. "It's that person she said she'd met! He's the reason she's been so happy!"

"And she isn't telling us about it?" Horem scoffed. He was so used to being trusted by his mother and all his friends with their secrets. His own twin sister being the first to keep something from him affected him greatly, and he tried to hide it with dramatics. "This is insanity! Professor Goedet, what do you think?"

The man shrugged. He wasn't Kiya's father, but knowing the girl since she was but a babe, she needed time to sort things out and know who she could trust with what she was hiding. "As long as she is doing well in school and is doing her research properly, I have no qualms about her new attitude. It was refreshing, actually. And was that not your goal, Horem? That she make new friends, beside you two and Ramy?"

"Well, yeah, but if and when it actually worked I'd have wanted to know about it!" Horem groaned. "I want to know who my sister's seeing!"

"Whining," Annie reminded her boyfriend, "Instead of tearing our hair out about it, why don't we just go there ourselves? Visit her while she's meeting up with whoever she's met?"

"Yeah..." Horem's eyes gleamed with mischief, which wasn't a rare sight to his girlfriend or his old teacher. "Yeah! All this worrying has gotten me stupid. Of course! That's the best idea ever!" he gasped, and, taking his love into his arms and spinning, kissed her lips joyfully.

Professor Goedet laughed; Horem had always been the short-sighted one, at least when it came to his schemes. "An idea indeed. I have a lecture to give, children, so I take my leave of you. Do remember that you still have your own lives to attend to."

=-=

"I wonder what I will ask you the next time we see each other," said Kiya, standing against the post near Ahkmenrah's coffin. In truth, knowing that Ahkmenrah was actually listening to her made her more uncomfortable now and watch what came out of her mouth, though the Pharaoh said he preferred it if she didn't... "Although it's not as if you or I will bother to list the questions down, so I suppose it doesn't matter... If you're wondering why I'm standing by your feet and not your head today, it's because I can see the entrance to this gallery better from here.

Rebecca--you've met, haven't you? We're having dinner tonight, and I'm going to tell her I know about you then-- told me someone was looking for me earlier, you see... I don't know who it was, but I intend to find out. Whoever it was is bound to come back here and find me, and I might as well spend the time waiting for this person talking to you. Doesn't that touch you? Ha ha..." Still, if Kiya couldn't see him face-to-face, she would still let her thoughts run a bit loose.

"Congratulations on winning the game last night, by the way!" Kiya followed up, easing her left leg and switching her weight to her right. "I'd been in such a hurry to leave last night that I forgot, and--wait."

Kiya shut her mouth and put on am extremely bored expression. She slumped her shoulders down and crossed her arms with a sigh.

"Hi, Kiya!" a cheerful voice called, and she already knew it was Annie, with a curious Horem walking into the gallery behind her.

"Hey, sis." Horem waved his hand at her awkwardly, looking around he gallery. His face scrunched up. "Wow. The Egyptian hieroglyphics here are just a bunch of bull, huh?"

"They are," said Kiya, not moving from her spot. "Hello, Annie. Horem."

Annie noted the exasperation in her voice and frowned, never having been one to hide her emotions. "Kiya, what's wrong?"

"Hmm?" Kiya and her brother, however, were the great pretenders, even before they knew what it meant to lie. "Nothing."

Horem raised an eyebrow at his sister. She'd never been this moody.

...Okay, moody in the dictionary had his sister's face under it, but now that he'd seen her happy, he was actually shocked to see her back to her old, boring self.

"Yeah, what's up?" he asked. "Did you break--ow!"

Annie gave Horem a horrified look as she elbowed him. He cried out, asking her what her problem was, but after recieving another look he barely got from her--a look that said shut your mouth, you oaf (a look that he actually only ever got from Kiya)-- he kept silent. She gave Kiya an apologetic look and awkwardly looked around the gallery, too. "So...this is the Pharaoh Ahkmenrah, huh?"

"Yes," replied Kiya, a little more animated now. "There is little known about him, but judging by the items found in his tomb and his tomb itself, it is known that he was a kind Pharaoh."

Horem approached Ahkmenrah's tomb and stared down at his mummy's mask. Snorting in amusement, he said, "His kindness must've made up for his face or something."

"Actually, no," said Kiya, growing impatient with her idiot brother again but knowing better (because she did know better about Ahkmenrah). "He was a handsome Pharaoh."

Horem froze. Was that sincerity he was actually hearing from his sister? Shaking his head, he resumed his obnoxious act so as not to show surprise. "Why?" he asked, though he was genuinely creeped out that his sister would say that about a dead person. "Have you seen his face?"

"Of course not," she answered, tracing her fingers against Ahkmenrah's tomb lightly. It was good that he was so bewildered by the thought of her actually seeing a dead Pharaoh. He'd never suspect her of that truth. "Now, what are you two doing here? I thank you for visiting me, but really, I can't count you as visitors."

Horem sighed. "Look, Kiya, just tell us who you've been see--"

"Oh, you can't? We forgot about that," said Annie, taking hold of Horem's hand. "We should get going now. Horem, didn't you say you needed help with another class?"

"What are you talking about? I--oh." Horem stopped as he saw Annie's elbow getting ready for another attack. "Yeah. I did, didn't I? Well, see ya, sis. Don't wanna be ya!"

"Goodbye, Kiya!" Annie waved as he dragged Horem out of the gallery. "See you tomorrow!"

Kiya smiled and waved her back goodbye. It was a good thing Annie knew when and when not to ask her questions. She really was a good friend, and now Kiya felt somewhat guilty for lying to her...but she promised Ahkmenrah, Mr. Daley, and all the museum characters not to say anything. And Teddy would certainly not be happy if anyone else found out. She wasn't born in America, so she didn't have overflowing pride for its presidents, but she did respect the good ones, and she didn't want to disappoint someone as chipper as Teddy. Even if he just was a wax figure.

Five minutes after Annie and Horem left, the man she'd been waiting for finally arrived. It was Keith, Keith Kashani, and he had a good smile on his face.

"Good afternoon, Kiya."

"Hello, Keith," she smiled, somewhat irked that she had even less time to speak with Ahkmenrah now, but not at him. "What're you doing here?"

"Looking for you, actually," he answered. "The docent downstairs said--"

"Oh, you were the one looking for me?"

"That was me," he said, looking down in embarrassment. "I was going to approach you earlier, but I saw your friends and I didn't want to interrupt."

"Oh, you saw those two? They're my classmates. They wouldn't have minded if you entered the conversation," said Kiya, "They'd be very interested, in fact, in your knowledge on Egyptian matters."

"How kind of you," said Keith thoughtfully. "And your friends, too. May I ask you something?"

"Of course," said Kiya. "What is it?"

"Would you like to have dinner this Friday?"

Kiya's eyebrows shot up in surprise. He'd already told her he would ask her to dinner beforehand, but the actual event of his asking still shocked her.

"I would..."

_Ahkmenrah_.

Oh, yes. She had planned to spend time in the museum that Friday.

"Actually," Kiya started, failing to notice the suddenly dejected look on Keith's face, "I've already got something planned this Friday with my friends in... History."

Kiya bit her lip. It wasn't a lie.

"Oh. Well, then--"

"But I'm free on Thursday--er, tomorrow," she continued, and Keith's expression was that of a happy man's once more. "If you're free then, dinner would be...nice." Oh, to be interested in was so hard, Kiya just realized. Annie had had a billion suitors until the Ganzouri twins had barked them all away... How _ever_ did she handle them before?

Not that Keith was really a suitor sort of suitor. He was a...a friend, who wanted to have dinner and talk of their immense love. For Egypt.

"Tomorrow will be wonderful, then," said Keith, retaking the air of mystery he had about him, but Kiya was too busy thinking of Friday to feel uncomfortable. "Where will I pick you up, Kiya?"

"Right here, thank you," she answered. There it went again. That ringing in her head telling her not to agree to giving him...no, just giving basically anyone her address. "Do you have any place in mind?"

"Let it be a surprise," he smiled. "I'm new here, but I know one place I think you would like."

Kiya stared at him, unsure of what to say as usual. In movies that Horem used to force her to watch, women would be sassy or...or even, ugh, sexy, to their men and challenge them to some sort of wordplay...and end up doing things she was taught again and again that only married couples should do. Why couldn't they make movies with girls who didn't actually have a single sassy or sexy (ick) thing to say to their otherwise interesting male friend to teach the audience where to go from there? "Er...you know what I like already?" was all she could come up with.

"Let it be a surprise," he repeated, a grin on his face as his green eyes sparkled, and he turned to walk away. "6, tomorrow night?"

Kiya nodded vigorously, just to get it over with. Keith must have wanted someone he could share sassy and sexy phrases with, or at least, he deserved someone enticing like that, and she was nothing like that sort. Sighing in relief as he left, Kiya slid down against the post behind her and fell onto her posterior.

"I bet you didn't have any problems like that," Kiya muttered, not even looking at Ahkkmenrah anymore. "Although if girls threw themselves at you every chance they got, then...um..."

"Kiya?"

It was Rebecca this time. Fate really didn't want Kiya talking to Ahkmenrah at the moment.

Her friend walked past the jackals and stared at Kiya's resting figure. She looked shocked at first, but later it was more of an amused expression on her face.

"I wish I were this comfortable when I worked on my research paper in college," laughed Rebecca.

Kiya smiled sheepishly, something she had only ever done before her grandparents. "Ready for dinner?"

"You said you had something urgent to tell me, so, yes!" the docent giggled, "Unless you're raring to continue sitting on the floor."

"No thank you," said Kiya, standing and dusting herself off, "Dinner sounds marvelous. I only wish I could bring Ahkmenrah some. You know, he can get so lonely without any visitors."

Rebecca's smile cracked, but only a little. What an odd thing to say! Unless...no, Kiya couldn't know, could she?

Kiya turned and pat Ahkmenrah's coffin once more. "See you tomorrow, Ahkmenrah," she said softly, but it was loud enough for Rebecca to hear.

"Kiya," Rebecca began, her eyebrows creasing in alarm, "Do you--"

"Oh, hey ladies," said Larry, coming out of nowhere, "Sorry, but it's closing time."

"Larry..." Rebecca narrowed her eyes at the night guard. "Does Kiya..."

"Uh-huh. Oh, and sorry about not being able to bring you out last night, Kiya. The party was just...er...raging. I couldn't get through."

"That's all right...but Mr. Daley!" Kiya scolded, her hands flying to her hips. Had Horem been in the room, his head would have exploded. His sister...deliberately acting like a child?He wouldn't be able to take it. "I wanted to tell her myself."

"Oh. My. Goodness. You know." Rebecca deadpanned, and Kiya felt as if she was disappointed to hear that another person had been let in on the secret, until-- "That is just great, Kiya! Oh, I've always wanted another girl's opinion on this. You have got to tell me everything that's happened to you." Her bright hazel eyes flittered to the Pharaoh's coffin before they returned to Kiya, now accompanied with a mischievous smile on her face. "And I mean _everything_."

* * *

**Sneak Peek** of the next chapter:

_As was her habit, she logged into her email immediately after she got home. These days, checking it had been a big disappointment. But she was barely able to speak with Ahkmenrah today, so fate decided to give her a little something else..._

_**You have (1) unread messages.**  
_

_Her heart beating quickly, Kiya clicked the number on the screen and closed her eyes. But as all children are, she just had to take a little...peek..._

_**Re: I'm back!**_

_Kiya leaned back onto her computer chair and pumped her fists into the air triumphantly. Finally!_

/end Sneak Peek

Email is fuuuun.

Hmm...not much to say about this chapter. But I'd be giggling myself to sleep too if a Pharaoh had stolen _my_ first kiss. (No matter if he's dead in the morning.) Also! When Kiya said Ahkmenrah was the first boy she'd willingly spoken with since Horem, it's true. Keith spoke with her first and Larry isn't a boy, he's an older friend.

**Random fact**: Horem is my favorite OC here.

If anything needs to be explained or if you'd just like to comment comment comment (!!), just state it in a review or PM me and I'll gladly answer it.

**Elven Heart 993: Well, great minds do think alike, it is well-known! :D And the person Nick wanted her to meet was Ahkmenrah. It's just that Don, his stepdad, picked him up before the sun set because he had some tests the next school day.**

**LM1991:** **Hahaha! Thank you! I'm so glad the last chapter's ending was gasp worthy.**

**twilightprincess219: Yes he is indeed the epitome of hot...ness, ha ha!**

**Raine44354: Yummy does not begin to describe Ahkmenrah! XD And he's my favorite character too, second only to Rexy (I cannot help but lohohooove Rexy).**

**nukefangirl: I'm glad you feel that way, and I hope you enjoyed the update!**

**ShiningGalaxy: Haha, I was waiting for someone to say that! ...Well, not really. I just like to pretend I'm psychic. Anyway, hope you liked this chapter. :) Don't cry! I couldn't help the cliffyyyy.  
**

Many thanks, too, to the awesome people who put the story on their alert lists and favorite lists! Feel free to drop by any tiiiime. (Or make your presence known through anything other than an alert.)

(Yes that was also copy pasted from two chapters ago.)

(No copy paste reviewing! XD)

(Yeah, I've seen people try.)

(Good night!)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary: Post Night at the Museum; begins before the second movie. Unluckily assigned to write a research paper on the public's level of interest in Egyptology, Kiya must visit the Museum of Natural History every day for two weeks and stay by Ahkmenrah's coffin. It is a boring task, but when she takes to talking to the still Pharaoh, life begins to get just a little more interesting. And interesting isn't even the half of it.**

Disclaimer: all the characters in the movie and its universe belong to...well, the people who made the movie! The only characters I own are Kiya, her friends, and her family. Well, some of them.

Okay, this one I made while I was half-asleep (which is why I can feel just a bit for Kiya when she's half-asleep throughout Thursday morning in this chapter, though her actions that morning--even to an annoying brother, and I'm sure we all know how it feels to have one at one point or another-- are inexcusable. You'll see). I think it's the worst chapter so far, especially since it shows the worst of Kiya. Anyway, I hope you still enjoy it, even just a little!

* * *

**  
Chapter 5**

Rebecca and Kiya parted ways after three hours and a half worth of stories, whispers, and giggles accompanied by dinner, and the latter scholar laughed all the way as she walked back home, since, wonderfully, she and Rebecca found that they lived only a few blocks away from each other. The company of an adult was always appreciated by Kiya, who'd grown up with a whole bunch of them. Only...the ladies who taught her as a child, she never maintained close contact with (unlike the way she had with Professor Goedet), so Rebecca Hutman was her first adult female friend (Annie and Ramy were still students); an adult female friend who was intelligent and who knew of the secret of Ahkmenrah's tablet, which held for them a bond that would not be easily broken.

As was her habit, she logged into her email account immediately after she got home. These days, checking it had been a big disappointment. But she had barely been able to speak with Ahkmenrah today, so fate decided to give her a little something else...

_**You have (1) unread messages.**_

Her heart beating quickly, Kiya clicked the number on the screen and closed her eyes. But as all children are, she just had to take a little...peek...

_**Re: I'm back!**_

Kiya leaned back onto her computer chair and pumped her fists into the air triumphantly. Finally! Finally, Ramy had emailed her back! The girl three years her senior was a great scholar of Egyptian culture. Kiya believed Ramy would be the next Zahi Ganzouri Sr. not only because of her great attention to all the minor details (and certainly not because of her sex, which was secretly found regrettable by Kiya at first, because had Ramy not been a woman, her/his intelligence would have been very attractive), but because she was so patient in everything she did! Kiya knew that when they talked about archaeological studies, she did not always get everything right, but Ramy would always correct her without disdain or annoyance, and Kiya was sure the girl would be able to get along with anyone she encountered, even Horem – just like Baba Zahi. Never mind the fact that she studied in Cambridge.

They met when Kiya had wrongfully opened a letter from Ramy meant for Professor Goedet. Her curiosity just wouldn't let her sleep until she read the letter she found on the Professor's sidetable drawer when she and Horem were taking care of him (he had fallen ill), and the letter showed deep insight on matters concerning not only Ancient Egyptian history but other ancient cultures as well, which Kiya knew just a bit about, but after resealing the letter and returning it to Professor Goedet, her guilt wouldn't let her sleep until she admitted her wrongdoing. Although she received admonishment and forgiveness from the Professor, her guilt still nagged her on and on about trespassing on Ramy's privacy, so, remembering the email address Ramy had typed into the letter, Kiya sent her an apologetic email, but she also commented on Ramy's admirable insight. They've been good friends ever since.

Clicking on the email, Kiya cleared her throat and prepared to read her friend's email out loud.

_**Hello again, Kiya.**_

_**I really do apologise for being unable to quickly answer your previous email to me. It has been two and a half weeks now, I know! I wanted to answer, really, I did, but I just didn't have the energy. I was given the rare opportunity of joining a dig and have been away. Although I did bring my laptop with me, I'd just drop nearly dead into my sleeping bag once we finished working and wouldn't wake up until there was work to be done again. The dig has, however, raised my stamina, and now I'm only nearly-nearly dead, haha. I hope you understand that I can't give you the details on this dig as I've given you on all my previous ones. It's all highly classified, but when it's over and we've compiled what we've learned from here, I promise you'll be the first person I'll tell.  
**_

_**Are you having fun there in New York? As I've mentioned before, I've never been there... but I always hear of how the frozen hot chocolate in a restaurant there called "Serendipity III" is amazing. I should like to take you there when I finally get the chance to visit! I know you simply adore sweets.**_

_**Will we ever meet? It seems I'm constantly pulled into digs (I am thankful for that, of course), somewhere, and you're busy studying... How are your studies, Kiya? As always, study hard. I hope that when we both become archaeologists, real archaeologists, we can work together.**_

_**Apologies for the brevity of this long overdue reply. My stamina hasn't increased that much, I now realize.**_

_**Take care of yourself there.  
**_

_**Yours always,  
**_

_**Ramy**_

Kiya smiled. Ramy was simply...the best. She never asked about boys in her emails or harried her about them, and she knew her so well! It would be awful not to reply immediately, even if she had a mountain of homework to bother with.

**_Ramy,_**

**_I understand that you can't tell me everything, but I'm very proud that you were invited to participate in that dig! I await the time when the world is able to hear of what you've learned from...wherever you are.  
_**

_**I would love for us to eat together in Serendipity III. I've never been there myself as I've never had the time, but my best friend did, once, with her boyfriend, and said that frozen hot chocolate was the most wonderful thing since...hmm, I don't remember what she compared it with, but she did say it was amazing! Perhaps it'll raise your stamina too, haha! It has been the same in Manhattan; all is well. Although Professor Goedet gave me this positively ridiculous assignment, I don't regret accepting it. It has been very...interesting. **  
_

Kiya rapidly tapped her fingers on the keyboard. Interesting wasn't even the half of it, really, but she couldn't tell Ramy. Even if she could trust the girl with her life.

**_Also, I haven't been in the library in days! Days. It's a great feat for me, really, though I still love the library. I just don't have much time for it because of Professor Goedet's assignment. _**

**_About meeting, we might! Someday. If I work hard and we're chosen for a dig at the same time! I wonder if it could happen as early as when I am an Egyptology graduate student and you are a real archaeologist already._ _You're my role model, you know, especially when it comes to being a good student, and I will work hard so that you and I can work together in the future.  
_**

**_I'm sorry this is short, too, but I have my own assignments that need working on. I've made a surprising number of friends lately and have spent some time with them, perhaps to the detriment of my sleep...but I swear it's not affecting my studies. I always finish my homework.  
_**

**_Take care of yourself...wherever you are!_**

**_Love,  
_**

**_Kiya_**

Pressing send on the computer screen, Kiya stood and dropped herself on her bed. It was so tempting to just sleep now...but she still had assignments to do, and the rest of her professors would grill her if she didn't pass these important papers by the end of the week (and tomorrow was already Thursday, not to mention she was going to have dinner with Keith that coming night). Hmm. Perhaps not grill her, as she was the daughter of Daphne Ganzouri, archaeologist extraordinaire. Maybe just toast... But she hated feeling as if she owed anything but her life to that woman.

_If father were still alive..._

Kiya shook her head. _Better those thoughts left unexplored. Ha! Unknown thoughts of a man unknown. _

Forcing herself back to her computer chair, Kiya sighed. The thought of having even more paperwork than what she already had plus her schedule (now that she had more than three friends she could spend time with) just about murdered her. On the bright side, she didn't have more paperwork than what she already had! And Persia was interesting, too. It wouldn't be too boring to write about.

Wow. She'd never known how bright it was to look at the bright side.

Homework was half-finished and determined to be completed the following night three hours later, and, not including the long time she spent brushing her teeth and finishing all her nightly bathroom duties half-asleep, Kiya fell to bed roughly two minutes after.

_The girl paced her grandiose room anxiously, staring at the floor and pursing her lips. "I've got to see him again..." she whispered, and just the thought of him gave her heart enough reason to beat so many million times quicker. "Perhaps I should...perhaps...but if he mentions seeing a new servant to father, he'll..." The girl finished the thought in her head and shuddered. She was aware that she was weak, unlike Heb, and she knew she would never survive if she were to receive his punishment. There was the need to see him again, but she couldn't risk her life for it._

_And then there came a knocking on the door. The girl froze, her widened eyes traveling to the room's entrance, before she breathed, regained her composure, and put on a tone of disdain as she said, "Enter."_

_A servant entered with his head bowed._

_The girl's throat felt itchy. "...Awan. What is it?"_

_"Your father summons you," he answered. The girl raised her eyebrows, but walked with him to her father's quarters all the same._

_"Do you know why, Awan?"  
_

_"He was worried, my lady. You did not attend dinner."_

_"He _never_ lets me attend dinner," she said spitefully as Awan closed the door behind him.  
_

_"You know which dinner he speaks of," replied Awan. "And peace, my lady."  
_

_The girl sighed, her shoulders dropping as she calmed down. "You're right as always, Awan."_

_"You must be talking of your father, my lady. I could never be so prideful as to agree with that."_

_"Yes, yes, of course," said the girl dismissively,__ "Last night was nothing serious. I was sleepy. Really, father can get so..."_

_"He only does all these because he cares for you, my lady," said Awan. "If it is not too bold of me to say...that is more than what he has ever shown for anyone else...since your mother died."_

_"That was too bold," chided the girl, but she withdrew when she remembered the lines on the old man's face. "I say it is more than what he has ever shown, then. And that will be between just the two of us, Awan."_

_"You have my word, my lady," he replied. "Oh, you know, I had such a relief last night. I was quite tired, you see, and I thought I would be reprimanded for asking another to do after dinner work, but thank Ra! For apparently, a pretty, young servant girl had taken my place..."_

_The girl showed none of the apprehension she suddenly felt bubbling inside her and raised an interested eyebrow at Awan. "Oh? The gods must have already begun to smile upon you, Awan, just as I told you they would before. Did you find out who the servant girl was?"_

_"Unfortunately, no, so I wasn't able to thank the lass," he said. "But for him to actually describe a girl...he rarely does such a thing. He isn't interested in looking for a queen yet, you know, so I was quite shocked..."_

_"He said that?" she asked, her interest notably sparked, "He doesn't want to marry?"_

_"Well, he simply doesn't talk about--oh, here we are." Awan looked at the girl encouragingly. "Be good, princess."_

_She smiled arrogantly at the man. "Always."_

Kiya blinked twice--no, thrice, as she awoke. She was going insane. What oddly vivid dreams...and yet she could barely remember what she saw in them. The words between the girl and the old man still echoed in her mind, however, even as she bathed and made herself breakfast, and...hmm. She was going to need to buy more toast and butter soon.

Today, Kiya was not at her sunniest. Although she was still happy that she knew a secret everyone did not, she was awfully sleepy, and all throughout the day she would be looking away from people staring at her as if she was the living dead (well, she knew one person always seen in that fashion, but he always knew so much more and looked much better than any of the boys around her did). Yawning would be her catchphrase for the day, and she could not be seen without doing it.

Fearing Annie's sharp elbow, Horem didn't bother asking his sister why she was in such a gloomy state that morning. As usual, his girlfriend asked Kiya if she was feeling better, to which the girl replied (hopefully able to hide the irritation she was currently feeling at being asked such a question when it was obvious she was _not_) that she was feeling much better that day. Horem rolled his eyes and shrugged it off. If she didn't want to tell them what was going on with her, fine. There were other things to think about in his life. He had other friends who needed his attention, parties that needed his help in setting up...! Such as--

"Oh, Horem, did you tell Kiya about the party on Saturday?" asked Annie as they strolled leisurely into the MEIS university building. As children, Kiya and Horem were trained to wake up excruciatingly early, and this part of their upbringing never left them (although there were special occasions when Horem would be completely knocked out from staying up so late for a party). Annie was dragged into it, too, because she fancied Horem picking her up from her residence hall, and she'd have to wake up two hours before class started if she ever wanted that to happen; they were never late for class.

"Oh, yeah," Horem muttered, looking away from the two girls slightly. Why did he have to do it? "Uh, there's a party this Saturday. We're invited, you and the two of us."

Kiya narrowed her eyes at him. "Who's hosting it?"

Horem sighed inwardly. She always had to know everything. "Gavin."

"Ugh!" Kiya scoffed in unison with Horem, and the latter twin did it just because he knew his sister would. "Gavin? You're going to a party hosted by that...by that..."

"Moron," finished Horem. Although they were the sort of fraternal twins who wanted, most of the time, to have nothing to do with each other, they were still what they were, the two of them: twins, and the kind that could tell how the other would react upon being faced with certain situations. (Horem was more attuned to it, though, because Kiya tried to think of Horem not as her brother but as an annoying friend she would try to stand for the sake of their long friendship. It felt like less of an obligation than 'for the sake of their being siblings'.)

Gavin was just one of the poor saps in Horem's residence hall that he had tried to set Kiya up with within the course of their first three years in college (he'd only given up this year). He and Kiya got along very well at first, and Horem even thought there was actually a chance of him becoming an uncle someday...until Gavin admitted that he believed books should never have been 'invented' and that whoever started making paper or whatever paper used to be before it was real paper should be burned at the stake. Having a distinct love for the creators of the papyrus scrolls, of course Kiya was enraged, and her date received a scoff and a wad of paper bills for dinner to the face. There were also the embarrassing looks from everyone else around the restaurant that Gavin, now alone, had to deal with, but he'd been trying to forget that since that night.

"Yes, that moron!"

"Look, sis, I know you hate Gavin--"

"I don't hate Gavin. I _despise_ him."

"But--"

"To even joke about burning people in general at the stake is abhorrent!"

"Okay, okay, chill!" Someone's voice always had to be raised to gain Kiya's attention. Horem ran his fingers through his hair and suddenly felt so much pity for the man Kiya was going to marry. If he would even come into existence, at this rate. "You don't have to go if you don't want to."

"But we would have so much more fun if you did," added Annie (Horem muttered something denying that), hoping they hadn't forgotten her presence. They had a tendency to whenever they got into arguments. "Didn't you have fun in the last party we attended together?"

Kiya pursed her lips. "Your mother's 50th birthday?"

Horem slapped his forehead and rubbed his hand down his face. Antisociality case in point. "So you're sure you don't want to go?"

"I'm sure."

"Well, all right, we can't force you," said Annie, still with a smile, albeit a disappointed one. "Horem and I should be going now. We have first period together and we've still got to share our work with the class. Will you be all right?"

"Of course," she replied nonchalantly, and Horem waved her goodbye as they turned to go up the stairs. As she watched them walk away, Kiya wondered if she should feel...bad about something. About refusing to go to the party with them. But, thinking of how they always went to parties (without her) with their other friends anyway and that now, she had many friends of her very own, Kiya shrugged and walked to her next class. There was no need for shame.

Classes did not go by as smoothly as she would have hoped, however, because she could barely stay awake. And when she did forget how sleepy she was, she remembered that she had a date that night, the first date she had actually willingly agreed with (and who'd actually wanted to ask her out, not blackmailed to by her brother). She couldn't tell Annie about it...Horem would find out quickly afterward. _You can handle it alone_, she would tell herself. _As you've handled everything else. Tonight will be easy. _And she thought, before her head fell back against her seat and her eyelids shut, perhaps if she repeated it to herself long enough, she would actually believe it.

"...and as such, many would like to believe it, yes," finished the professor for Horem's religion course, his second class that day. He was a hazel-eyed man whose age was constantly a matter of debate among his students, for he had most of the makings of an old man: wrinkles on his forehead, gray hair turning white, and crow's feet on his eyes which intensified whenever he smiled (though this was a rare occasion), yet he was young and sprightly in manner. He would taunt his students and even jeer at them, sometimes; his youthful, miserable attitude was in complete contrast with Professor Goedet's, who was only a little older than Daphne Ganzouri with his dark skin and still black hair, yet whose brown eyes and outward disposition reflected the seasoned wisdom of a man thirty years older. "Any questions from the class?"

His students instinctively turned to the class know-it-alls, those who usually answered the professor's questions and with additional information not found in their assigned books; Kiya was one of them, which had earned her the Kiya/K-I-A jeer from many of her classmates, Horem (who was beside her) another, and Annie, to Horem's left, was just one to keep her head down and pretend to take notes down whenever something like this happened. As one of the more intelligent (which was Horem's preferred epithet instead of KIA) in the class raised his hand to speak, the class made an interested sound ('ooh'). Horem noticed that this was directed toward his sister, and as he turned his head to look--

"Oh, crap," he muttered, then reached over and shook Kiya, whose mouth was wide open as her head lay stiff against her chair. He had never been very subtle. Neither had she. "Kiya," he whispered loudly, "wake up!"

Be it with vengeful grins or fearful eyes, the class watched as their professor slowly ascended the stairs to the row occupied by the Ganzouri twins.

Kiya shoved Horem's hand away as he began to slap her cheek lightly to wake her up. He even used his handkerchief to wipe the little drool she had on the side of her mouth, but she would never know that. "Go away," she muttered, and with the inebriated grumble of a sleeping child. "I know we're not in Alexandria yet."

Their surrounding classmates giggled.

Horem hid his irritation for them and continued to nudge Kiya awake. "Come on, Kiya! Wake up or--"

"Go away!" Kiya screamed, her eyes still closed. She had never sounded more like a baby in her life.

"You may stop embarrassing yourself now, Mr. Ganzouri," said the professor. His back turned to the old man, Horem grit his teeth. _Here we go. _"On the other hand," the old man continued, and, fixing his gaze on the sleeping girl, shouted, "Miss Ganzouri!"

Kiya felt her bloodshot eyes fly open. The first thing she saw were her classmates below her, laughing silently; Horem came second to her left, closing his eyes and gritting his teeth, and then she looked up to the man looming over Annie's shaking figure--

Professor Karim.

He looked down at her as she shuffled to sit up straight, a small smirk playing on his face. "Miss Ganzouri."

Kiya was a bit of a hypocrite. Although she now returned her mother's feelings in that she professed disdain at seeing the woman again and professed, even just to herself, that she wanted to owe nothing but her life to the woman, she secretly prided herself in knowing she was a sort of...untouchable...in the world of her field of study because of the family she had been born into. She was the only granddaughter of the archaeological luminary Zahi Ganzouri Sr. and textile heiress Kiya Eid-Ganzouri, and sole daughter of Zahi Ganzouri Jr. and Daphne Ganzouri, the couple of world renown! She and her brother were untouchables. And if she told herself she wasn't afraid of just another professor like this, then she must have been right. Looking the professor in the eye, she spoke. "Yes, professor?"

"What time is it?"

Kiya checked her watch stiffly. "Half past ten."

"And what could that mean, Miss Ganzouri?"

"...It's an hour and a half before my next meal, professor." The class giggled at that, too, but the professor hardly seemed amused.

"Do you always do this, Miss Ganzouri? Sleep in class like a little high school girl and give an attitude when asked about it?"

Kiya shrugged. "I didn't go to high school."

"Oh, yes," mocked Professor Karim, "Horem and Kiya Ganzouri, scions of Egypt's greatest archaeologists. Flown all around the world and tutored through their childhood by the greatest professors known to the scientific world..."

Annie shrunk at this and held Horem's hand as he groaned inwardly while Kiya's confidence began to waver. The old man continued. "If you believe you are immune to the realities of life simply because of your heritage, you are sadly mistaken. This attitude is not becoming of two in the Honors Program."

Kiya, though she maintained eye contact with the professor, was speechless. Her back was cold with sweat as it clicked in her head: she'd walked right into that one. She and her brother were untouchables. They were incorruptible, infallible, yes...but only to those who gave a damn. This was one verbal argument she could not win.

The class was quiet now, many feeling triumphant as the Ganzouri twins were reprimanded for the very first time (now if only that would happen to all the know-it-alls in their class), and for the very first time, they had nothing to say in return.

At least, Kiya didn't.

Horem was not guilty of the charges the professor uttered against him. He loved his family, but he did not have the Ganzouri pride his sister and his grandfather had. He prided himself on his own exploits, his own accomplishments, and nobody could accuse him of otherwise. Neither could anyone but _himself_ talk down to his sister like that. Opening his eyes and unclenching his teeth, he stood and faced Professor Karim. "With all due respect, _sir_, that accusation was hardly fair. It would have been right to reprimand my sister for her sleeping habits, but you go too far with your words," he said, disappointing now those in the class who rooted for his reputation's demise. And oh, how he could speak with so much conviction when he wanted to! Had he been a war general, he would have been able to rally all those around him into battle. "My sister showed no 'attitude' in answering your questions. I detected no sarcasm; nothing that would denote an 'attitude'. And you yourself said in our second week of classes that even the best commit mistakes. Was one mistake enough reason to speak so cruelly to my sister? To me?"

Professor Karim stared at Horem, and for a moment the boy believed that smirk was permanently glued to the old man's face. "And do you really believe, Mister Ganzouri, that you are classified with whom I speak? That you are part of _the best_?"

Without hesitation, Horem smiled. "We're in the Honors class, aren't we?"

The smirk on the old man's face finally broke as he chuckled. "Quite right, Mister Ganzouri." His eyes briefly flickered to the boy's sister._ How disappointing..._

Annie was still immobilized as their professor returned to his place below them, but once they were out of sight, she cheered and wrapped her arms around Horem. "My hero!"

"Well, that was insanely anti-climactic," muttered one of their less intelligent female classmates, and, with mumbles of agreement from the others, the lecture resumed.

"A thank you would suffice, I think," Horem whispered with a grin, leaning over to his right once Annie released him.

Kiya glared at him from the corner of her eye. "Things wouldn't have gone so awry if you just woke me up," she replied, still in a whisper.

Had Horem been Kiya, he would've scoffed. "You think I didn't try!? You attacked me whenever I did!"

Kiya shook her head and turned back to her notebook. She _did_ have a record of attacking people in her sleep before...and Horem had just made one of the greatest comebacks she'd ever seen. And in her name, too! Perhaps she could thank him...no! Wait. That would mean admitting that he was better than she was. People believed she was the smarter twin, especially because Horem was such a party goer, but in truth--and Kiya knew it better and denied it more than anyone else did--Horem was the one who could take anything and store it in that big, seemingly spacious head of his. Acknowledging that she'd needed his help would be acknowledging his superiority over her in everything. He already had more friends. He already had mother's love. And she, too, loved her brother, but she could not put herself below him. With this in mind, Kiya decided she would thank her brother another time.

Receiving no answer, Horem huffed and turned back to his notes, too. _Older brother, older brother,_ he repeated in his mind so as not to implode on the spot. _Take care of her no matter how insufferable she might become, mum said...you're the older brother..._

=-=

"Kiya," said Professor Goedet to her that lunchtime as he spotted her glumly walking out of an opposite classroom, "Are you all right?"

Having only vaguely heard him, she raised her eyebrows. "Pardon?"

"You've been acting strangely," he said. "Yesterday, two of your professors commended your sudden willingness to participate more than usual to me, but this entire morning was filled with complaints about you falling asleep in class!"

Kiya tried to force her furrowing eyebrows back up to hide her irritation as the Professor finished speaking. She didn't want to listen to this right now. This morning had been the most embarrassing morning of her life in the university, and here he was reprimanding her?

"You exaggerate, Professor. I only fell asleep in one class, and that was by accident, I promise," she began, her head spinning with fury. "It was Professor Karim's, though he must have already told you. And did he _really_ complain that much?"

"I suppose not," said the Professor, but it needn't be said that he simply avoided talking about his colleague's _charming _personality. "But you know you must stay on his good side and get nothing but the highest marks from all your professors if you want to graduate with any of the Latin honors, don't you?"

"I know, Professor," she tried not to sigh in exasperation, "But he has a long standing hatred for my family. You know _that_, don't you?"

"Calm down, child," the Professor said, giving her an surprised look. "Take a deep breath. I can hear your blood boiling!"

Kiya let out that deep breath and closed her eyes. "I might have been a little high-strung lately."

"Yeah,_ a little_, sure." Horem rolled his eyes as he passed by with a stomp.

"...My fault," Kiya muttered very quietly in response to Professor Goedet's questioning glance. "But don't tell him I said that."

Hiding his amusement, Professor Goedet held his hands up as if caught in the act, saying she had his word.

Running past the halls after Horem, Annie asked, "Kiya, are you coming to lunch?"

"Yes, yes, I'll catch up!" she called after her. "Professor, I'm going to--"

"Lunch, of course," he nodded, and with a smile, added, "Behave, now, Kiya."

Kiya returned it bitterly. "Don't I always?"

Lunch outside seemed to heighten the tension between the Ganzouri twins. Neither of them wanted to sit beside each other and neither of them wanted to sit across each other, so Annie was forced to sit in between the two. They ate shoulder to shoulder that lunch, with each twin speaking only when the other had completely shut up. Kiya left their company once she'd put the last bite of her meal into her mouth, waving goodbye to Annie and pretending, of course, that Horem did not exist (had she not, she might have actually gone with her plan to apologise). Since she had gotten at least half an hour of sleep in her religion course already, Kiya had no unwanted altercations with any of her professors following lunch, and Thursday afternoon was even more quiet and uneventful than the usual.

Majority--scratch that. All of her time after school was spent looking for clothes to wear for her date that night.

Keith was a graduate student. Did he like girls with more professional or mature looking clothing? Ramy would probably know what to wear, though they'd never talked about dates and clothes. Or did he like the dainty sleeveless tunics Horem so loved Annie in? Kiya didn't dabble in many types of fashion, and the only fashion she ever paid attention to was the kind she saw on the people she cared about (and that was not a varied list). All Kiya knew was that she was a casual sort of person. Button down tops and capris denims were her usual style, and she only wore her dresses when she forgot to wash her clothes--which hardly ever happened, so it had been at least a year since she last bought a nice dress. Hmm. Yes, maybe a dress would be nice. If she had one.

Bursting out the door of her single studio apartment, Kiya thought of where she would go in a hurry to buy a dress. Annie was always the one leading whenever they went shopping. Still running, she glanced at her watch. Was there still time to buy a dress? Oh no--ow!

Kiya held her shoulder and groaned. Shoulder-to-shoulder, almost face-to-face, she collided with a girl who'd also been running out of her apartment! And quite violently, they would later agree. After a second of moaning, they looked at each other with painful grimaces.

"Sorry," they apologised in unison.

"It's all right," they said in unison (again).

The girl smiled at Kiya, amused at their exchange. "Hey. I've never seen you around before."

"Oh," Kiya began, realizing that this girl was a graduate student. "I live by the end of the hall."

"Cool," the girl nodded. "Sorry about bumping into you again. I was badly in need of some soda. What were you in such a hurry for?"

Kiya looked from left to right, as if making sure there was no one listening in. Figuring she would never see this girl again anyway (she was clearly not an MEIS student, otherwise they would have recognized each other even just a little), she decided it would be all right to tell her. "I have a date tonight, and...I don't have a dress for it. I was going to buy one."

The girl stared at her thoughtfully. "Tonight? In how many hours?"

Kiya bit the sides of her cheek as her eyes darted around the hall. "One."

The girl gasped. Kiya expected that. "You can't buy one now! You don't have time. Come on," she suddenly cried, pulling Kiya towards her room, "I'll lend you one of mine for now. What size are you? Small?"

Kiya nodded, somewhat afraid of what the older woman might do if she refused her help. "Small would be fine, thank you."

"Sure thing!" the girl smiled, and, after throwing piles of hangered dresses from her closet, pulled out a striped halter dress. "I think you'd look just wonderful in beige and off-white," she said almost dreamily before shoving Kiya and her dress out of her apartment. "I don't need it until next week. It's all right, you don't need to thank me."

Kiya blinked as the door was slammed in her face. "Well," she mumbled, "Thank you very much anyway."

Returning to her room (though not before the girl realized that she needed soda, ran out the hallway again, tossed Kiya a matching shawl while telling her, "Tell me how the date goes! I feel like your fairy godmother..." and left laughing to herself), Kiya put on the dress (which was a nice fit), applied evening makeup the way she was taught by one of her old tutors, and stepped out of her room. No fairy godmother in sight, so she had to brave this part alone. It was a good thing hailing a cab to the museum was extremely easy (though the driver did wonder why a girl dressed up like she was wanted to go to the museum, of all places). Kiya avoided the odd looks she received upon running up the stairs to the museum as best as she could without beating at the people with her bag and made her way to the Egyptian gallery.

"What do you think, boys?" asked Kiya, twirling around in her borrowed dress, "It isn't mine, but don't you want to go out on a date with me now, too?"

Ahkmenrah's jackals chose not to reply to that.

"Very funny," Kiya rolled her eyes, then laughed. "I kid. Say, I haven't seen the two of you alive yet...I'll remember to look for you tomorrow when I come visit. You'll see-- I can walk a mean Egyptian!"

Moving on to Ahkmenrah's coffin (the jackals were too quiet for her), she called, "Oh, Ahkmenrah! If only you could see me now. I'm a real girl!" Oops. Different story. "Anyway, I need to talk to you about some things. Horem and I, we..."

"Excuse me, miss?"

Kiya whirled in surprise. "Mr. Daley! I can explain."

"Whoa." Larry was another person confused by her wearing a dress in the museum. "Kiya. I didn't recognize you with the..." he made hand gestures to show what he meant, because he couldn't quite find the right word. "The..."

"Dress? I have a date tonight."

"'Dress, yes. And that's great," he smiled. "so shouldn't you be with your date...instead of here?"

"He's picking me up here."

"Oh. But it's closing time."

"Ooh, I forgot," Kiya frowned and squeezed her eyes shut. Quarter to six was the museum's closing time! "Mr. Daley, may I please stay here until six? Six is when we agreed to meet."

Larry raised a still confused eyebrow at her. "Did it have to be at the museum?"

"I didn't want to give him my apartment address," she reasoned. "Please, Mr. Daley? Sundown will not come for at least three more hours."

"All right, all right," Larry sighed. "Just pick a better location next time. A museum, even this one, isn't exactly the most romantic--"

"Kiya?"

Kiya and Keith cocked their heads to the side to see each other past Larry. The latter Egyptology student approached his date and turned his head to look at Larry as he did. Glancing back to Kiya, he asked, "Are you...ready?"

"Yes, yes I am," she answered. "Oh, and... Keith, this is Larry Daley. Mr. Daley, I'd like you to meet Keith Kashani."

Keith and Larry shook each other's hands, nodding and giving their necessary pleasantries. Kiya wondered what Mr. Daley thought of her friend. Was this how daughters felt when they were introducing their male friends to their fathers? It was awkward. "Anyway, I should be going now," said Larry, pointing to the exit. "Actually, so should you guys. Have fun on your date! It was good to meet you, Keith."

"The pleasure was all mine, Mr. Daley," Keith called out to Larry before turning to Kiya. "You're friends with... the night guard?"

"I babysat his son three years ago," she told him, wondering if he had any qualms about such a thing because of Mr. Daley's job. "He's a good man. Anyway..."

"You're right. Let's go," said Keith, taking Kiya's hand and leading her to and past the exit so quickly that she wasn't even able to say goodbye to Ahkmenrah. As they entered the cab, he asked, "Are you excited?"

"Well, I would like to know where we're eating for dinner."

"Let it be a surprise, didn't I already say?" asked Keith laughingly. Kiya thought she should have been the amused one because Keith was going to have to tell the driver where they were going, but the young man was way ahead of her. "You know where to go," he told the driver, who grinned and stepped on the gas.

Kiya watched the still knowing look on Keith's face. "I will see the restaurant sign before we get there, you know."

"No!" Keith played along. "Well, God gave me the solution for just that!"

Instinctively, she backed away from him. "What would that be?"

"Is that Kahmunrah's wife!?" Keith gasped, pointing to the window beside Kiya, who gasped, too. "Where?"

Darkness overtook Kiya's vision; Keith had tricked her and covered her eyes!

"Keith," Kiya frowned. "That was awful. You don't give hope to people and take it away so quickly like that."

"I'm so sorry," Keith dramatized. "It was the only way!"

Laughter filled their taxi cab all throughout their trip to the restaurant, and finally they arrived at...wherever Keith had planned to bring her. Kiya could hear people murmuring as they passed her, probably wondering why a man was covering her eyes at such a mundane thing. Well, at least there were people there. She'd been afraid he was taking her somewhere...else. It was a product of her mother's age-inappropriate (she now realized) stories to her and Horem as a child which she never got to shake off, either.

"Are we here? You may uncover my eyes if the answer is yes," said Kiya gingerly.

"As you wish," Keith replied, chuckling, but took a secret last whiff of her before he released her. "Your surprise, mademoiselle."

Kiya snorted at this inwardly and stared at the restaurant before her. It was a tiny thing... Almost like those hidden, magical candy stores every child (even she and Horem) had and loved at least once. What was this place? Looking up to find the sign, Kiya's eyes widened and her mouth fell agape.

Serendipity III.

* * *

Didn't I tell you it was the worst chapter so far? I just ran out of brain juice with this one...I'm really sorry.

The only part I liked about this was when I made a cameo in my own story (as in me the writer, not the story's narrator)! Haha, I'm such a loser.

[_Cameo parts taken_] But! In light of this, since you awesome wonderful and also super fine reviewers are so superbly awesome, wonderful, and also super fine, the next cameo roles go to the first two reviewers who can tell me (in a review) **which part of this chapter I made a cameo in**! I am not named in the chapter, by the way (otherwise my character would be named with the initials J-W, which she is not, because I didn't name her), and I only have one speaking line. _And I am insanely genre savvy_, though not very smart. That's your first clue! :) (Haha, I wonder if you awesome wonderful and also super fine reviewers even read this part) Also, I am NOT a plot important character. Nope, I wasn't that graduate student who lent Kiya a dress, just in case you're wondering! That's one of the two recurring cameo roles up for grabs right now (I didn't describe the girl at all just so her character would be up for grabs, though she already has a few character quirks)! Whoever goes first gets to pick which cameo role she's going to get-- the graduate student OR the other recurring cameo role, a female character who will be appearing in Kiya's dreams as a friend.[_Cameo parts taken_]

By the way, if I have any guy reviewers out there, just tell me so in the review or in a PM, because I'm assuming that all my reviewers are girls; therefore I'm only making female cameo roles up for grabs.

I'll PM (right away) the first two reviewers who get it right and ask the first one which one she wants to be. If you get the second free role and don't want it, let me know so I can give it to the next one who guessed correctly. :)

There'll be more cameo roles to be taken later on in the story!

**Random fact**: Ramy is not of British descent _at all_.

And to my awesome wonderful and also super fine reviewers(!):

**Raine44354: Haha, don't worry! Kiya wasn't in any trouble with Rebecca.**

**Elven Heart 993: I really love Kahmunrah's character! In an admiration sort of way, not the 'eeeeee!' sort of love we all have for Ahkmenrah! Haha. Hank Azaria was awesome, even if they made him portray him as an incompetent (I mean, in the REAL villain sense, he was totally incompetent). I'm really excited to put NatM 2 in here already! And though you must have already guessed it (great minds thinking alike and all, haha XD), Ahkmenrah will play a much bigger role in this fanfic's version of the second movie. (I'm fine with Ben Stiller, but it's really annoying how they decided to give more scenes to him instead of giving Ahkmenrah and Kahmunrah a chance at character development by making them interact.)  
**

**chagrinlullaby: Dang, I wish I could seriously dream about that! I can only daydream about it. XD If you're insane and should go to an asylum, then I'd have been locked up in one a long, long time ago! It took me soooo much self control not to take that kissy scene further for the sake of proper story development! Hahaha. And I hope you liked the update! :D**

**witchbaby300: Haha, welcome to the ranks of the Ahkmenrah fan...girl...iness? Anyway, it's perfectly normal to be his fangirl! XD And suing you would mean suing the entire population of girls in the world and getting all of us--even me--incarcerated! And I don't wanna go to jail :( Haha. Also, I hope they'll make a cute couple! Haven't gotten many scenes between them yet.  
**

**bean15: I'm happy you like the story! And yes, he is the most wonderful thing since...CHEESECAKE. (Sorry in advance to the cheesecake haters out there.) Here's chapter five for ya!**

**Miss Courageous Hufflepuff: Wow, I'm flattered that you'd actually print this out! Thank you so much. **

**Me Myself and I and Us and: I love it too! OH MY GOODNESS DANCING WITH MYSELF. You know that song!? Freaking awesome! But I love The Donnas' version the most. Only my best friend and I know that song where we come from so I haven't listened to it in a while, but thanks for helping me realize that it's a GREAT song that fits, sort of, Kiya. (I even listened to it when I was dying of writing this chapter so so so awkwardly. It kept me going!) If you have any more songs in mind for the story, please feel free to suggest them! I'll definitely incorporate it into the story as another ringtone Horem annoys Kiya with (that is, when they're not fighting anymore. Or I'll find a way to incorporate it into the story somehow). I'm glad you like Kiya's character, though the really prideful, arrogant part of her was revealed in this chapter. I don't mind long reviews, in fact, I LOVE them! And I don't mind people ranting to me or just typing whatever comes to mind, so go ahead. XD Because the idea of anything Night at the Museum and Ahkmenrah REALLY gets me going, too.**

**ZodiacSnake: Thank you! I really try not to focus on just one person all the time, though sometimes I can't help it because Kiya's the main character (as said by the story's narrator in Chapter 1). Hope you liked this chapter!  
**

**Dawnmist 11: I'm glad you like the story! Hope you liked chapter five, too. :)**

**Kuramanamanama: A Kurama fan, yay! And I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TAKING ABOUT. The USUKAY thing, I mean. It's infuriating! I rose from the ashes of Quizilla (I wasn't a writer, but I did read there as a pre-teen), where everyone used to make Mary-Sues and pair them up with either Hiei, Kurama, Yusuke, or Koenma (poor Kuwa got no love XD). I don't know why I stayed there so long. I'm honored that you'd review this story when you don't usually, and hopefully this chapter didn't disappoint too much. :|  
**

**KariFlameUser: Thank you! I'm happy that you enjoy reading the story. Hope you liked the update!**

Thanks so much for reviewing, everyone! You are all beautiful kind awesome wonderful and also super fine. XD ! Tell me which parts you liked about the chapter (even though Ahkmenrah wasn't in this one *sob*)! I want to know what kind of scenes you guys like.

If anything needs to be explained or if you'd just like to comment comment comment (!!), just state it in a review or PM me and I'll gladly answer it.

Thanks also goes to everyone who put this story in their alert lists and their favorite story lists! Feel free to drop by any tiiiime. (Or make your presence known through anything other than an alert. You'd be more super fine that way.)

Till next time! :D

J-W

P.S. You know, all this time I thought I placed it up there somewhere, but I didn't. This is an AhkmenrahxOC story. Hahaha!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary: Post Night at the Museum; begins before the second movie. Unluckily assigned to write a research paper on the public's level of interest in Egyptology, Kiya must visit the Museum of Natural History every day for two weeks and stay by Ahkmenrah's coffin. It is a boring task, but when she takes to talking to the still Pharaoh, life begins to get just a little more interesting. And interesting isn't even the half of it.**

Disclaimer: all the characters in the movie and its universe belong to...well, the people who made the movie! The only characters I own are Kiya, her friends, and her family. Well, some of them. Shaila O'Connor and Naveen Sitaram belong to **bean15**, while Kesi and Sadiki belong to **Elven Heart993**. Please don't use them without permission.

Just for reference later on and because I don't want to clog the Author's Notes part at the bottom, the REAL American Museum of Natural History doesn't actually require payment for a tour guide; the tour comes with the entrance admission. But, though Kiya comes from a wealthy family, she wouldn't have agreed to the project if she knew she had to pay every time she entered the museum, so in the fic-verse, only tours, events, and programs are paid for, but the entrance is free. Most of the people in the film seemed to have been going on tours, anyway.

A funny thing is that when I went to the Museum of Natural History before, when NatM just came out, it was our last day in NY and the only thing we'd done so far was go on one tour and shop (because of the women in my family) for the rest of the days we spent there, so after hearing much of my whining, my family rushed to the Natural History museum and got there at about...5:20, I think? And they didn't charge us for anything anymore! I think it's because the museum was going to close already anyway. Not sure. Whoops, shutting up now.

I hope you enjoy this chapter! It is insanely long, and when I say insanely long I mean it is INSANELY LONG (longer than the longest chapter so far by 4,000 words. Sorry). I didn't want it this way, but since school is starting next week and I know I'll barely be able to write anything when that happens, you get this INSANELY LONG CHAPTER. The bad news is that it's insanely long. The good news? Ahkmenrah makes another appearance! Everyone give a great **_huzzah_**!

Or not. Just...you know. Read.

(By the way, Annie, Kiya, and Horem are twenty-one and not nineteen. I made a mistake before. Sorry.)

* * *

**Chapter 6**

"And then I just had to be the smart ass, you know, and tell my professor, 'No, obviously, there aren't any snakes crawling around in there. It's been buried for how many years?'"

"What happened?"

"There was a snake, ironically, and it took quite a bit out of me."

"You were bitten by it!?"

"Hahaha, no! It took all of my energy to scream for help from anyone who could hear me!"

Dinner had been going on like this for an hour and a half already, and Kiya was not complaining. Keith was amusing, and not in the way everyone seemed to find Horem entertaining (only heaven knew why). Although she was silently praying to God not to let Keith be just another Gavin, she doubted someone who had to keep looking back to books to make a living would be telling humorous tales of his experiences as an Egyptology graduate student if he didn't want to be what he was studying to become.

Kiya had asked Keith how he knew about Serendipity III, to which he replied that it wasn't _that_ small (that he wouldn't have known about it). He gave no impression of knowing of Ramy's email to Kiya the night before. Kiya would normally have pressed him for more information, but she didn't want to scare Keith away and was forced to chalk it up to coincidence.

"If I may ask," said Kiya once they both finished laughing, "What convinced you to become an Egyptologist? It isn't exactly the best money-making business, and it takes great perseverance and just the right amount of luck to actually find anything of great importance to distinguish you from your colleagues."

The grin on Keith's face faded at the question, and a thoughtful look overtook his features. "I always had an interest in Egypt as a child," he said, "though I could never explain why. My parents didn't mind. They bought me all the books on Ancient Egypt that I wanted, in fact. When it was time to choose my path in life, however... my grandmother protested vehemently to my choice; to my becoming an Egyptologist."

Kiya wasn't so surprised at this, but she did think of how she'd never encountered such obstacles with her grandparents. She wouldn't have, even if she had chosen something other than this path. "How did you convince her, then?"

"In truth," replied Keith, looking almost ashamed, "I almost relented to her wishes. She wanted me to become an accountant, as she and my grandfather had, which helped them amass the current family wealth. And if I'd actually become an _accountant_..."

Now a great hatred filled Keith's eyes, and had that been directed at her, Kiya would have been afraid. It was as if he could kill with all that anger in him. But it wasn't for her, those feelings he harbored, so she felt as if she could understand him. Or try, at the very least. He loved Egypt so much that it pained him to think of becoming anything other than one who studied its glorious past...

"I'm sorry," Keith muttered, shaking his head. "I didn't answer your question. I was just about to give up on persuading my grandmother to allow me my choice of study (for she held the funds to send me to a university) when I came across a book. Its author painted Ancient Egypt in such a magnificent and alluring manner that I felt I would never be happy if I didn't pursue my ambitions. I went straight to my grandmother to tell her this. I told her that if she didn't want to fund me, I didn't care. I said I'd rather rot studying what I loved than prosper becoming what would make me miserable." Seeing the almost fearful expression on Kiya's face, he smiled. "Now, I didn't actually want to drive her away or shun her. It was...bait. The day I told her this was the longest in my life... Standing in her office with bated breath and shaking knees, I waited for her answer."

Kiya, hands on her closed knees as she anticipated the story's conclusion, asked, "And then what happened? What did she say?"

"Thank God, she didn't call my bluff. She said, and I remember every word, 'Very well. If this...Egyptology...is what you wish to undertake, then I will not stop you. But you must promise me two things.' I asked her, still apprehensive, 'What is it?' And she answered, 'That you are not doing this for a woman...and that this will make you happy.' I agreed, of course! And she gave me her blessing. I've been working toward it ever since."

Kiya nodded and restrained herself from clapping her hands at his love for Ancient Egypt. "That was very brave of you, Keith. Who wrote the book, by the way? The one that convinced you to defy your grandmother's wishes?"

"Ah, yes. Zahi Ganzouri, Jr. was the author's name. He was quite a famous Egyptologist. Son of the man who found that--who found our _friend_ Ahkmenrah. Perhaps you know of him."

Kiya tried not to let that moment be the second time that night when her mouth fell agape. She succeeded, but only barely. "Yes," she mumbled, "I...do." And she could stand to learn more about him, but she kept that thought to herself.

"I thought you would," said Keith almost absentmindedly, "But enough about that. Why did you choose to pursue it, Kiya?"

Kiya smiled. "My father was an Egyptologist before he died."

"I see..." Something flickered across Keith's face, but Kiya was too busy thinking of her father to notice. "I'm sorry."

"It's all right. I can't even remem--"

"One Frrrozen Hot Chocolate!" announced their server. He lowered a tray carrying a plate of what looked like dessert _heaven_ to Kiya, whose one weakness was anything sweet. Horem said it was completely ironic, as Kiya was anything but sweet, but it did the job, and he used this against her as much as possible when they were outside.

"Thank you," Kiya said enthusiastically to their server, who smiled in reply. Once he was gone, she took her straw out of the cup and began sipping the excess chocolate from the plate under it, almost like Keith wasn't there at all.

"Oh. Wow," Keith muttered to himself. "You always did love sweets."

Kiya glanced up from her sipping. She must have heard him wrong. "Pardon?"

"You really seem to love sweets," said Keith, smiling at her and taking a sip from his own straws. But Kiya wasn't really listening anymore, and she gave him only a nod to show she was 'listening'. In fact, she finished the entire thing, allowing Keith only ten spoonfuls from the cup and eating the rest herself. Only realizing how awful that was when their server handed them the bill, Kiya tried to pay for dinner, but Keith grabbed the check and raced her back to the man, money in hand. Kiya allowed it, but only after much grumbling.

"I'll let you pay next time," Keith joked as they exited the restaurant, "I promise."

"Really?"

"No," he laughed. "A princess never has to pay for dinner."

"Ha ha, princess...no," Kiya shook her head with a serious expression on her face. "I am a scholar."

Keith shrugged, looking away. He faced her again after a few seconds with that smile of his again. There was just something about it that Kiya knew she was supposed to remember, but she couldn't. "May I walk you home?"

That was quick. "U-uh..." Kiya's eyes darted around for an answer. "I still have somewhere I'd like to go."

"You're not talking about Dylan's Candy Bar around the corner, are you?" Keith asked in an amused tone. "It closes at nine o' clock tonight. The time now is...9:03."

Kiya cursed mentally and wondered if she was that transparent these days. And curse the traffic on Thursday night, too! One hour drive to a restaurant...Hmph! "I wasn't planning to go to Dylan's Candy Bar," she scoffed, and rather convincingly, considering she'd just been caught. "It isn't a place you know of. I'm certain it'll take a while again, and I don't want to keep you. I'm sure you have other important things to do."

"I don't know if I want to let you go yet," said Keith seriously, "Alone especially. Are you sure you don't want me to come?"

Frowning, Kiya nodded. "I can take care of myself, thank you," she answered. "As I said, I don't want to keep you. Really. But thank you for this evening. I had a very good time."

"I had a wonderful time," said Keith, and kissed Kiya on the cheek as he had the first time they met. He hailed a cab for her afterwards, and as he helped her into the taxi, he took one last look at her. "Remember what I said about your brother. Will I see you again?"

"Maybe," said Kiya, copying his mysterious smile in an attempt to be humorous before she closed the door, "Good night!"

The cab sped off, and Keith waved goodbye to Kiya until she was out of sight. He'd be walking home to Hotel 41 that night. Heaven knew why his friend had to get him a place in the middle of Times Square; he wanted to be near the museum, not the New York entertainment he certainly wasn't interested in, though he couldn't complain about the penthouse the man had reserved for him. Beginning to walk in his hotel's direction, he kicked a small pebble out of his way and sighed. He had no more than three weeks left to convince her, but...

_I don't want to keep you._

Those were always her words.

=-=

Never having planned to go anywhere after dinner in the first place as she still had papers to finish, Kiya went straight home and trudged back to her room. The graduate student who'd kindly lent her the dress was still nowhere to be seen, so she decided she would give the dress back the following Monday, after she washed it of anything reminding anyone of her. (Horem used to borrow her shirts when they were children, and his boy smell was all over her clothes all the time; she found she could never do such an awful thing to anyone else.)

Feeling filthy for some reason for some reason she could not supply, Kiya showered before tackling her homework and found herself thinking of Keith. He was such a good friend; so kind to her! And he paid for dinner. Horem never offered to pay for dinner when they were together. He'd always ask her if she wanted to pay before saying that fine, he would pay for food this time. Keith's humor was harmless, too, unlike Horem's teases and 'playful' banter. Ugh. And Keith said Horem should understand her, being the older brother, and refrain from his unnecessary teasing! He would have made a much better older brother, Kiya decided by the end of her bath, and two hours afterwards, she decided she would never go out again until she finished all her homework.

Snores filled the apartment once Kiya's head hit her pillow.

_The return to her room seemed short compared to the trip away from it, the girl thought to herself as she walked the lit path back to her own quarters. Remembering to hold her head high (because she was only allowed to look like anything but nobility when inside the confines of her room), she was relieved to find no one else lurking the golden halls near her quarters, but entered it without much haste._

_She had almost fallen back onto the bed when she saw a human figure sitting down in her place and gasped. The person on her bed seemed to now realize her presence and frantically shuffled to stand. When she saw the girl, however, the person held her heart and sighed in relief. "Do you realize you walk like a ghost? Surprising me like that..."_

_The girl stared at the servant girl before her with much shock. Relatively short black hair, bronze skin, and distinctively cheery brown eyes greeted her sight. "What in the world are you doing here?"_

_"Well," said the servant girl, sitting herself on the bed and crossing her legs, "It seems the gods heard your prayer and cured me of my illness so I could return to your side."_

_"Oh, really?" asked the girl, an amused grin settling on her face. "You think I actually thought of _you_ while you were sick and away?"_

_The two girls stared at each other blankly for a few seconds before she grinned again and opened her arms. "Oh, Kesi, I missed you!"_

_The servant girl, Kesi, smiled too and embraced her friend. The girl thought of how, though Kesi was born a slave, they grew up together. With the exception of her grandmother, she was the only woman whom she ever allowed to talk down to her (in private). "I missed you, too," Kesi replied. "Perhaps not as much, because I was asleep all throughout my fever...but I am better now. Why did your father summon you?"_

_"He was worried because I didn't attend our dinner last night. I told him it was my lack of sleep, but he seems to think something is wrong with me and has relieved me of my duties until I 'recover'."_

_Kesi laughed. "My, my, my! This isn't because you actually took to busying yourself with something other than work last night, is it?"_

_"What?" the girl frowned, "I have no idea what you are talking about. Work is the only thing one can busy oneself with at any given time. Also, did I mention that Sadiki missed you the most? He told me when we spoke one lunch that after the royal family, you were his top priority. And we all know that he only mentioned the royal family because he was in the presence of others who could hear."_

_"I already know Sadiki is the most wonderful palace guard--no, the most wonderful man I could ever meet," Kesi smiled, but she would not be distracted. "Oh, but have I told you? My clothes were actually washed well when I found them this morning! And properly folded and stored in my quarters...almost as if they were owned by...say, royalty!"_

_The girl felt the heat rise to her ears and her cheeks. "I might have been busy with something else."_

_"Oh, I knew it!" the servant girl giggled. "What did you think of him?"_

_"Only that I must see him again."  
_

_"I think I might be able to read your mind!" Kesi laughed. "I just knew you were going to say that."  
_

_"This is no laughing matter," said the girl, thoroughly distressed. The work she did for her father many considered complicated, but it was all nothing compared to her situation now. "You must not understand how it feels because Sadiki is always around, and you always see him. But...oh, Kesi, I had no idea he would be so kind!"_

_Kesi rolled her eyes. "Oh, enough of your daydreaming!"_

_The girl scoffed. "What? And after I spent hours listening to you go on and on about Sadiki before you were introduced!"_

_"No," Kesi shook her head slowly, looking a little apologetic, "What I meant was that instead of crying about it, we must find a way for you to see him again! Or at least reach him. Write him, maybe? Hahaha! Or...wait. Why do you have that look on your face?"_

_Suddenly, a whole current of thoughts and images rushed through the girl's mind. It wasn't very easy to sort out, but one thought stood out from the rest--the letter. Something like that, he would keep to himself. Her father couldn't have been kept in confidence for everything. Yes. She would do it._

_"Oh, no," Kesi began, "You are not actually thinking of..."_

_"Get me some papyrus scrolls from the priests, please," the girl said, pushing her friend to the door. "Hurry...and make sure father doesn't learn of this."_

_"Of course he won't," said Kesi, scoffing now. "Now, are you sure you really want to do this? I mean...writing him..."_

_"Kesi!"_

_"All right, all right!" Kesi sighed, holding her hands up in defense. "Papyrus scrolls from priests. Right. And you say I have the silliest connivances..."_

Kiya could almost swear she could see that Kesi girl's bangs move left and right as she turned to leave, but she awoke and those bangs were all she could remember seeing now. What was that girl planning? She could feel it rushing through her head...and all just to see a man! Whose face she couldn't even see...

Pulling herself away from her bed and heaving herself to the shower, Kiya tried to remember her dreams for the past few nights. There were nights that were filled with normal dreams--and by normal, she meant bizarre, because all silly sorts of things happened in those dreams-- but some nights she had bizarre dreams--and by bizarre, she meant they were normal, because there seemed to be a flow of events going on in those dreams and the conversations within them she was actually able to follow. Hmm. What _did_ happen in those bizarre dreams before? She could barely remember now...For the first one, there was a bright light. For the second, she couldn't even remember anything but an old man's voice, and for the dream from which she just awoke... the girl's bangs. What was her name? She'd already forgotten! Ugh...

Kiya shook her head. Enough about dreams for now. There was still school to be troubled over.

=-==-=

"We've still got to find a birthday gift for Gavin," recited Annie, taking the words she uttered down in her notebook. Turning to the boy beside her and poking him, she asked, "Do you have any ideas?"

"Uh..." Being one to frequent parties on the weekends, Horem wasn't the kind to sleep or do anything other than listen and participate during class hours. Still listening to Professor Goedet in front, he muttered, "I don't know. I think he said something about needing new boxers."

"Horem!" Annie frowned, hitting him lightly with her pencil. "Concentrate."

"I'm trying to," he said, briefly glancing at her with a sharp look before turning back and listening to the lecture.

Although she knew he was right, Annie pouted and started listing gift options down by herself. Kiya would have known what to get...all right, no, she wouldn't, because she despised Gavin and wouldn't even think of getting him coal, but if she wasn't told that the gift ideas were for Gavin, she might have tried to help. Unlike Horem, she didn't mind talking to Annie in class...but not today. On the other side of the lecture room sat Kiya, paying attention to the Professor and taking down notes. Every now and then, the girl beside her would ask her questions concerning the lecture, but she wasn't really her friend and Kiya was still technically alone. She didn't even eat lunch with them this afternoon, saying she still had a few things to work on in the library, but it was clear that she and Horem hadn't patched things up yet. A weird occurrence, because a day after any fight, Horem and Kiya would usually begin talking again as if nothing had happened.

Annie saw the chance to right this when Professor Goedet's class ended and it was officially the weekend again. Kiya was quickly walking out of the lecture room when her friend called out to her, knowing that she wouldn't able to ignore her. It was Horem she had the problem with, after all.

Almost reluctantly, Kiya waited for her. "What is it, Annie?"

"Do you want to join us for a movie tonight, Kiya? It'll be fun!"

"Erm, I can't," answered Kiya, shaking her head slowly, "I have research to do in the museum, if you've forgotten, and afterwards I've still assignments I'd like to work on today instead of on Sunday..."

"Oh." Annie nodded, thinking that at least she wasn't snappy (she usually was when she had a fight with Horem) today. "Well...all right. I hope you have fun. We should go out together after your research is done; we haven't in a while."

"We should," said Kiya, appreciating Annie's attempt to pull their friendship from the rut it had fallen into. "See you, Annie."

As she left the classroom, her brother approached his love. "Well, I tried." He heard her mutter to herself.

Rolling his eyes, he wrapped an arm around her. "You shouldn't have. Now, what were you saying about presents?"

=-=

Kiya arrived at the museum praising the subway in contrast to the taxi system in New York. Although she found the small talk some of the drivers provided very entertaining and sometimes, fun, the traffic was detestable and she did not appreciate people running for the sidewalk when it wasn't even their turn to walk yet and causing even more traffic. (She did this, too, but when you are the one in the car, it is very hard not to find yourself harboring murderous intent for all those walking.)

"Rebecca!" Kiya smiled as she approached the front desk. "Hello. Did anyone ask to go to the Egyptian gallery last night? Did you see anyone who did and wasn't part of a tour?"

"Kiya, hey. No, I didn't," Rebecca shook her head, trying to hide a grin, "although yesterday I toured two families, both of five, and I know three families of four and one class in a field trip were also given a tour around the museum."

"Wonderful," said Kiya, taking this down in her mind. "Not much variety to this research..."

"So," Rebecca began, leaning forward on the front desk and releasing her grin, "Larry told me you had a little something something to do last night..."

Kiya laughed immediately at this and looked around to glare at Mr. Daley, but he wasn't in sight. "He told you?"

"Well, you know men," said Rebecca, laughing along. "They can't keep secrets."

Kiya felt her eyes go wide.

"Not all of them!" Rebecca added, "It's a generalization Larry's part of. But not...you know. I don't think Ahkmenrah grew up in an environment where learning secrets and giving them away were seen as anything but traitorous."

"I hope so," Kiya said to herself, and then to Rebecca, "The date was all right. It was with Keith, though you must already know; the one who asked for me two days ago. He would make such a good older brother."

"Brother?" Rebecca repeated, confused, "Kiya, I don't think that was his intention."

"Yes, I know the word 'date' has a romantic connotation, but...I don't know. He doesn't feel that way. When I think of Keith and romance, I think to grimace, because I find it awkwa--"

"Excuse me," a man with his family behind him interrupted, making Kiya scoot over with a bump of his hip, "Where can we get a tour?"

Kiya wanted to glare daggers at the man (which is how she so _maturely_ dealt with most of the rude people she encountered), but he and his family meant business for the museum, and that she could not argue with. "Oh, right here, sir," answered Rebecca, giving Kiya an apologetic look. Once the family paid for the tour, Rebecca left the front desk to lead them.

"Wait, Rebecca," Kiya called after her. The entire family turned back to see what she delayed their tour for. Trying to ignore them, she asked, "Are you coming tonight? To..."

"Oh, no, I can't," Rebecca shook her head. "I forgot to tell you--I'm going out of town this weekend to visit my parents, so I'll just be packing tonight."

"I see. All right. Take care, then," nodded Kiya, "And have a safe trip."

"Thanks, Kiya," Rebecca smiled. "See you next week!"

Waving goodbye as the family ushered her friend on to give them the tour already, Kiya frowned. What an impatient lot they were. Then again, she and Horem never had to wait for anything when it came to tours and excavation sites thanks to their mother's name. Which was probably the reason why Professor Karim hated them so much, Kiya thought as she ascended the stairs to the museum's left wing; not that her mother's choice of their upbringing was their fault.

"Kiya!"

A boy and his curly locks were barely able to stop themselves from colliding with her as she turned to see who had called her name.

"Nick," she held the boy's shoulder to keep him in place, "Are you staying the night this time?"

"Yep," Nick nodded, failing to note the irritation Kiya pretended to still have. "Sorry I wasn't there before. Don picked me up, so..."

"Mr. Daley already informed me. It's all right."

"Hi," said Nick's father, coming up from what seemed to be nowhere. "How was the date last night?"

"All right," Kiya shrugged. "I learned that he'd make a much better brother than the one I have now."

Larry blinked. "You have a brother?"

Nick blinked, too. "You had a date?"

"Yes, but it hardly matters now," said Kiya, uncomfortable with talking about dates with Nick. What with the culture in America now (or what she'd heard from Annie, at least), Nick was probably considered well-versed in matters concerning dates as compared to her! And 'probably' in this case meant 'obviously', because Kiya could count the number of people she considered friends on her fingers! What more of the males she would ever consider seriously dating? Wait, she couldn't even count that--it was impossible to count _zero_ on one's fingers.

"Yeah, I guess," Nick shrugged and paused, as if in deep thought, before he continued. "So who did you meet last Wednesday?"

Walking across the second floor and unintentionally leaving Mr. Daley behind to attend to his own business, Kiya pointed to Atilla the Hun's exhibit. "The very first one I had the honor of meeting was the _illustrious_ Atilla the Hun," she told him, knowing he wouldn't understand that illustrious in that sentence had actually meant_ mentally unstable_. "He seemed rather eager to tear my limbs off until your father saved me."

Nick laughed hard at this, and Kiya decided not to mention that she was dead serious (well, almost dead). "Who else?"

"There was Theodore Roosevelt...or Teddy, as I think he makes everyone call him, and there were Jedediah and Octavius with whom I shared some conversation. That cowboy is quite the apprehensive one, isn't he? I saw many others, too, like the Tyrannosaurus--"

"Rexy," Nick corrected.

"Yes, Rexy, and a few mammoths..."

"Did you see the lion?"

"No, and I'm glad of that!" said Kiya, horrified at the thought of lions. Another traumatizing memory for Horem involving Africa resurfaced in her mind, but she tried her best to push it down (admittedly, it was funny, but as they were in a fight at the moment, she tried not to remember anything that would make her think of him joyfully). "Oh, and if it is of any importance, I was able to watch the weekly soccer tournament."

"It is important!" Nick gasped, nodding sagely. "I heard Ahkmenrah and the Vikings won! Which reminds me; I'm going to go congratulate them later..."

"That also reminds me," said Kiya, "Nick, who did you want me to meet?"

"Oh, that. It was Ahkmenrah!" Nick smiled. "I remembered that you were always telling me stories about Egypt when you were still...babysitting me...and you're always hanging around his coffin. You're the one who's always talking to him, right?"

Kiya grit her teeth before answering. "How did you...?"

"He told me," Nick smiled. "Actually, he told me he was happy that someone was talking to him, and then he asked me if I could check on who it was. I asked my dad if he saw anyone hanging around the Egyptian place lately, and he said he remembered seeing you sleeping there once, so...yeah."

"Oh. I see."

"He's a good listener, isn't he?"

"He is," Kiya nodded, "Yes."

Noting the smile on her face, Nick grinned to himself. "And he's a good guy, too. He became my best friend in the museum after he helped me and my dad save the museum before. Has anyone told you about that?"

"Only the beginn--"

"Okay, I'll tell you the whole thing." Nick said excitedly. At that moment, he reminded Kiya of her mother's old friends whom Horem simply loved listening to as they narrated stories of their youthful exploits. "It all started a few months ago when..."

=-==-=

"...and he's been my best friend here ever since," Nick finally finished, sitting cross-legged by the museum's back door exit. Their conversation had led them here, where no one would notice them staying for the museum's nightly affairs. "He's a really good person."

"Even the ancient texts said so," said Kiya, sounding a little more happy than she should have about the story ending. She didn't usually mind listening to children–Nick, rather, as he was the only child she really knew–as they told her exciting stories that seemed completely bizarre and just plain unreal, but when Nick's version of the story went for more than an hour and forty-eight minutes, she just knew it would last until the sun set (and it was somewhat painful to keep her head craned down, listening to Nick talk the entire time). "As a child, I remember reading of how he always tried to use peaceful means to resolve clashes within the kingdom. They even say some rebel leaders would capitulate after meeting him. Historians actually criticize him for having been too meek, unable to wield an iron fist when it was clearly needed, but for times like those he had a commander-in-chief of his armies to smash the unrelenting rebel forces..."

Kiya paused to admire how the last of the sun's rays finally disappeared below the horizon. "Everyone will be waking soon. Shall we go meet them, Nick?"

No one answered, and she would find as she turned her head that her little friend had left a long time ago. Kiya chuckled to herself. Normally, she would have reacted to this with red cheeks and angry, shot-down eyebrows (a Ganzouri trait she shared with her brother), but she remembered how, at his age, she too would abandon her tutors as they lectured for the sake of seeing the new items her mother had managed to have excavated. Making her way to the museum lobby, she wondered: did Baba Zahi know that the treasure he found– the tomb of Ahkmenrah and his tablet– would be the most life changing of all his findings?

No use asking, of course, because she couldn't tell even Baba Zahi about the musem's little secret.

"Kiya! Look!" Nick's voice came to her from above, causing her to look up and cover her mouth. The boy was sitting on the Tyranno--er, Rexy's back! Which was all spiny, obviously, despite the abaca rug they had tossed over its back, and it didn't look very stable at all!

"Nick!" she gasped, mouth still covered, "you're going to fall from there!"

"Oh, you sound like Sacagawea," said Mr. Daley, appearing once again out of nowhere with Theodore Roosevelt and giving her a reassuring look. "It's completely safe. Right, Rexy?"

Rexy lowered his head and nudged it dearly against Larry's, who patted the dinosaur skeleton's cheekbone. In this position the skeleton looked Kiya right in the eyes, and Kiya felt her knees shake at the thought of those sharp teeth coming into contact with her flesh. In particular, her quite-easy-to-rip-off flesh.

On the other hand, at the sight of a human staring at him, completely frozen, the dinosaur skeleton cocked his head. Did this human suffer a reverse reaction to being exposed to the golden human(they called him 'king')'s golden rock, wherein it would be immobilized until the sun rose? If so, was it caused by the lumps on its chest? Then again, the mate of the human on the horse (but who was currently not on the horse) also had lumps on its chest, as did many of the other human (or human-like) characters around the museum. Rexy dismissed this theory quickly and decided he would just look for his bone with his best human friend (the human with the flashlight who screamed a lot)'s child on his back instead of giving himself a headache thinking about senseless human-related things.

"O-kay, I think you and Rexy should run along for now, Nicky," said Larry, slapping Rexy's cheek lightly to get him moving. The thing that seemed to be a staring contest between Rexy and Kiya was beginning to unnerve him, too, though Teddy was too busy getting a laugh out of it to notice.

"All right. Come on," Nick cheered, pumping his right fist into the air and rallying the T-Rex on forward. "Let's go find your bone, Rexy!"

Kiya could breathe again only once the T-Rex was out of sight. "Don't worry," Larry finally laughed, too. "You'll get used to it. I mean, if you're going to come around often."

"And she has good reason to!" Teddy agreed, "Don't you, Kiya?"

"What do you mean, Mister...erm, Teddy?" she asked, wondering if the former president meant what she thought he meant or if he meant something less...humiliating. Not that she would admit to it. It's just that the way he said it, she thought...

"Oh, you know!" he smiled, a little twinkle in his eye, "There is so much you can learn from all the characters here! The different civilizations, the wild animals, the neanderthals..."

"Oh, yes." Kiya felt relief come over her again, though she didn't know why. There was nothing to be embarrassed about. "Yes. Have you seen Ahkmenrah, by chance?" she added, "I still have some questions to ask him."

"Probably upstairs in his gallery," said Larry. "Or partying with the Civil War guys. He's big on parties, you know."

Now Kiya narrowed her eyes at him. "I doubt it," she told him with much finality, and with that, turned her back on the night guard and the president to find the Pharaoh. Ahkmenrah? Big on parties? What an insult! It was like comparing him to her brother, who was nothing at all like _him_!

"Hello." Kiya heard a gentle voice say to her as she began to ascend the musem's left wing again, which startled her, since Ahkmenrah had been the only one who ever seemed calm around the museum.

Before her, a woman with dark, braided hair and equally beautiful dark eyes smiled politely at her. Kiya wondered who she could be until her attire clicked in her mind–she'd seen it in the early publications of her mother's book on the Shoshone woman Rebecca so admired: Sacagawea.

Kiya seemed to have said this out loud, as the woman nodded, pleased with her ability to pronounce her name properly in her first try (Larry was not so lucky). "Yes, that is my name. Are you a friend of Larry's? I can tell you are not part of any museum display..."

"I'm a friend of Nick's, actually," she replied. "And Rebecca's! You know Rebecca, don't you?"

"Miss Hutman, yes," said Sacagawea. "She is an intelligent woman. What is your name?"

"Kiya Ganzouri," Kiya answered, holding her hand out to shake the Shoshone woman's. She was immensely daunted by Sacagawea's beauty, but she couldn't show it. It was a sort of defense mechanism she'd learned to put up when meeting many women Kiya knew were so much more attractive than she. Confidence, confidence, confidence. No matter if it was all pretense. "I've read about you, in a book...written by my mother. It is an honor."

"And it is an honor to meet you," replied Sacagawea, her smile widening as she shook Kiya's hand. "So you are Kiya Ganzouri."

"Excuse me? What do you mean by that?"

"Hmm?" Sacagawea replaced the smile on her face with an innocent expression. "I mean that I am pleased to meet you."

"Not that. I meant to ask what you meant when you said, 'So you are--"

Capturing Kiya's and Sacagawea's attention, a barbaric scream erupted from below–an accurate description, since it came from the throat of a genuine Neanderthal. He and his friends had set a bronze Christopher Columbus on fire! The three neanderthals danced around Columbus' flaming arm as if it were some pagan god while the explorer himself flapped his arm helplessly and opened his mouth as wide as he could, screaming and letting out a few Italian curses nobody understood.

"Oh, not again," Sacagawea sighed, rubbing a hand over her face. "Kiya, will you excuse me?"

"Go ahead," Kiya nodded, watching the scene with morbid interest. Sacagawea rushed to the scene and led Columbus–who was burning to the tip of his arm, now– to the water fountain, only to encounter Teddy and Larry, who'd already prepared a bucket of water in preparation for the event. Hmm. She could wonder how often it happened, but that would be a waste of everyone's time, and Kiya only had all night. Without any more trouble, she arrived at the second floor landing and looked ahead. No Atilla in sight, thank God, and though there were zebras, terra cotta soldiers with a Ming dynasty guardian lion, an oddly still (considering the circumstances) Eastern Island Head and a few other museum characters she did not recognize, at least they didn't seem hostile...what was that?

Kiya felt something wrap itself around her waist and slide off just as quickly. Fearing the possibility of a snake actually touching her, she wiped her stomach and her sides, trying not to twitch in disgust, and in the process found herself looking down. Crouched below was a monkey whose black legs and arms were tucked behind his back; his shoulders and his muzzle were a tanned sort of buff, and his thick, dark tail curled and uncurled behind him. What had Kiya wondering was that he had the cheekiest little grin on his face, too...

"Why, hello there," said Kiya, bending down and thinking of how tempting it was to pet the animal. "Where might you be from?"

"Hey dum-dum, don't trust the simian!" a low voice rumbled.

Frowning, Kiya saw the Eastern Island head actually speaking! And...calling her a dum-dum? "You're not a very polite Moai, are you?" she called out to it. "And I am not a _dum-dum_."

"You a dum-dum if you trust the simian!"

"I see nothing wrong with--" Kiya stopped when she saw the monkey begin to jump from his left foot to his right, waving something in his hands. "Is that my money clip!?"

The monkey opened his mouth and made a chattering noise, as if laughing at her. (He very well was, Kiya believed.)

"Told you, dum-dum!" came the Moai's voice once more, now adding to it a rumble of deep laughter.

"Oh, be quiet!" she hissed at the Eastern Island head before setting her sights on the thief gloating about his catch to her with his irksome dance and chatter-filled jeer. Feeling like one of the basketball players Horem had a hobby of watching each year, Kiya tried lunging for the wallet, but the monkey would just toss it from his hand to his tail and back whenever she did. At one point he even stuck his tongue out at her!

"Just give me the money clip, you monstrous little--!" In a desperate attempt to retrieve her valuables, Kiya grabbed the monkey by his arm and tugged; his tail released her money clip, and the monkey himself yelped and reached down to bite her hand off. "Ow!" she cried, pulling away just in time to miss the beast's teeth.

The fall had scattered her money clip's contents, and now she wished she had listened to Annie and gotten a normal wallet, instead. Her cash, her ID, and...oh, thank God! Kiya knelt down and picked a small, squarish piece of thick paper on the ground. Flipping it over, she was able to breathe again (for the second time that night). It was still intact: the picture of a thirty-three year old man with an already receding hairline, thick eyebrows, a strong jaw, starry eyes, and the boyish smile Horem had inherited–it was a picture of their father, Zahi Ganzouri, Jr.

As she knelt up to reattach her money clip, Kiya felt something sharp against her posterior.

"Watch out, dum-dum!"

Turning around, she saw the tip of a sharp, golden spear. Her eyes followed the spear upward, from its tip to its handle, to the literally black hands holding them--them, Kiya now realized, as there were two spears--and then to the spear-wielding people's shoulders, and finally, their heads. Long snout, pointed ears, muscular human body... She had also heard the deep growling of an animal before she realized it was coming from them.

"Aaahh!" Kiya screamed, turning and falling once more on her bottom. "Ahkmenrah's jackals!"

Behind the jackals danced the monkey, pointing angrily at Kiya and laughing at her when she noticed him. Nick told her about this. Ever since they had saved the museum from its former night guards, its inhabitants bore in themselves a strong sense of camaraderie; they would threaten whoever had threatened their friends. But it wasn't _her _fault that she had to take her belongings back from the conniving little monster!

"Don't. Kill me." said Kiya slowly. Never having seen Ahkmenrah interact with his jackal-headed guards, she had no idea how they operated. She acted gaily to them in the day, but would they remember that? "I'm Kiya. Do you remember me? I talk to you in the day. I have no trouble with you...but that monkey friend of yours there stole my money clip earlier. I thought it only fair that he return it to me!"

They didn't seem to understand her, and now...now they were squinting their eyes at her and holding their spears closer to her neck! Where was Ahkmenrah? Surely he could appease them! What would he say to...hmm. When Nick first met Ahkmenrah, the Pharaoh had said words he couldn't understand.

"_I am a friend of Ahkmenrah_'s," she said, speaking in the language of their ancient homeland. "_I mean no harm._"

The jackals looked at each other for a second before they withdrew their spears. Holding their left hands over their chests, they each knelt down on one knee.

Kiya closed her eyes, now at ease (or in the very least, less fearful for her life). How on earth could Larry have stayed here? He earned the respect of the museum characters when he saved the museum, but how else could he have controlled these people? Although, at least her speaking to them in their language seemed to have calmed them down. Opening her eyes, she spoke again. "_I mean to speak with Ahkmenrah. Have you seen him? Can you...speak?_"

The monkey, realizing Kiya could speak peacefully with his defenders, ran off to terrorize another poor soul. On the other hand, the jackals nodded but shook their heads soon after. "_The Pharaoh left for the right wing in a hurry once the sun set,_" they said in deep, grating voices. Kiya would later realize that it was more the sound of boulders painfully being moved from side to side than real voices which they had. "_He gave strict orders not to follow him._"

"I see. _Thank you,_" she said, smiling at them (as much as a girl could smile–or was that whimper?–at another after her life had been threatened by that other person) and leaving for the right wing as quickly as possible. They seemed...nice, but some time away from them would be best after what had just transpired.

"Bye, dum-dum! You owe me gum-gum for saving your bum-bum!" the Moai called after her, but was ultimately ignored.

Deciding to walk back to their posts near the Pharaoh's coffin (should he wish to return to his sarcophagus any time soon), the jackals looked to each other again, curiously this time. It was a few minutes before one of them decided to speak. "_She has..._"

Listening intently, the other jackal raised his eyebrow ridges. "_She has...?_"

The first one cleared his throat, as if meaning for his words to be forgotten once he uttered them. "_She has put on a bit of weight, hasn't she?_"

=-=

"This is preposterous," Kiya moaned, resting an elbow against the second floor rails overlooking the museum lobby. "I've looked all over the _right wing_! A man in gold shouldn't be this hard to find!"

Kiya had seen a lot of things in the right wing. She had seen the birds, which tried to peck her violently until she ran out of the ornithology section screaming. She had seen the wooly mammoths, which were mating until she entered (this also caused her to run out screaming). She'd even seen the lions! The lionesses seemed especially frightening. It was a good thing they were busy with their cubs or else they would have noticed her nearly tripping over the neck of an ostrich whose head had been busy fixing its eggs (were those alive, too?) in the museum sand. And still there was no Pharaoh, no Ahkmenrah, not even a speck of his golden bracelets or his enchanting, sea green eyes!

Kiya subconsciously chose to overlook that last thought.

Perhaps he was downstairs. If his jackals hadn't seen him pass by the left wing and he wasn't by the right wing, then surely he wasn't on this floor. Although all the brisk-walking-so-as-not-to-miss-Ahkmenrah had actually tired her out... Luckily, there was the elevator! Only a few steps ahead... Pulling her feet to stand before the magical pulley device and pressing the 'down' button, Kiya leaned her head on the wall. At least she was getting some exercise from visiting the museum, something Baba Zahi always reminded her about. Her constant running about was not all for naught.

The door opened. Kiya stepped in and pressed the lobby button casually. No one would know if she had a little rest in the elevator...

Was that paper?

There was this...sound behind her. At first, actually, it had been a sort of scribbling sound...but she ignored it because she thought she was simply that tired. But then it became the sound of a turning of a book, and--wait, there was more scribbling, and then a sudden stop. There was the slamming of a book shut, too.

"Hello, Kiya."

Kiya sighed in relief, having watched too many horror movies with Horem as a child, and turned around. "Ahkmenrah, I've been looking all over for..." she paused. There was something wrong here. "Ahkmenrah, what in the world are you doing here? With..." She looked him over. Pschent with curly hair underneath, enchanting, sea green eyes, wonderful smile, golden attire, well-toned stomach, books, and a pencil.

Wait, what?

Books and a pencil was all her mind repeated, and that was all her mind would repeat about what she was looking at.

"With what, Kiya?"

Kiya shook her head. "With a pencil and...are those children's books?"

Ahkmenrah smiled proudly. It was rare to see a man in between his teens and his thirties proud of reading and writing on a children's book. "I'm studying," he said, "It is an old book of Nick's. And to answer your question before, I did read books in my time."

"I can see that. That you're reading, I mean. But I don't understand why...why you'd be studying a children's book–Nick's book when he was a child. And why are you in here, of all places?"

"Oh." There was that odd, cold thing Ahkmenrah would feel creeping up his back whenever Kiya was in his presence, which he had resolved to shake off. "It is because I can speak English, Kiya, but I cannot read or write it. Therefore, I must start at the beginning of the learning process, and Nick and Larry have informed me that this is the beginning. And I like this...moving box...rather,this_ elevator_–that is what it's called, isn't it?–music. I find it rather soothing...compared to the noise the other museum exhibits are making outside. I cannot command them to be silent; Larry has informed me that they are free to do what they wish in this country, so I have chosen to confine myself in this elevator instead."

Hearing this, Kiya could barely repress a snort. Or a giggle, which she inadvertently let slip.

"What is so funny?" asked Ahkmenrah, genuinely confused.

"I've never met anyone who put it that way. That studying in the elevator was advantageous because of its soothing music," she admitted, still with a small chuckle.

Ahkmenrah's eyebrows creased. "Do you think it...odd?"

"No, no!" Kiya shook her head an looked for the right word to describe it. "It's..."

_Cute._

That was the first thing that came to mind; a word that had never been in Kiya's vocabulary! She had to pull herself together and remember that he was only half-alive. No falling all over herself for a nearly dead boy, she mustn't forget.

"It's perfect," said Kiya, all before she covered her mouth as if she'd said a forbidden word. So much for holding her ground against being so...silly. Although Ahkmenrah seemed to beam at what she'd said, she shook her head and moved to walk out the now open door to the museum lobby. "I don't want to bother you," was her excuse. "It--it's good that you're studying."

"No, no, no, Kiya, wait," he called after her, setting his books aside and standing to hold the door open. He had never done that before. "Do stay. You don't come every night, so I will have some time to study another day." Seeing that he had convinced her now as she turned around to listen to what he was saying, Ahkmenrah beckoned her to him inside. "Come sit."

He seemed to have forgotten her comment on his elevator hobby, so Kiya gladly acquiesed to this and sat down beside him, against the left side of the elevator. "Ahkmenrah, don't you ever run out of breath here?"

"I open the door when that happens," he replied, and stared into Kiya's eyes for a number of minutes until the girl could no longer hold his stare.

"What is it?"

"Oh, it's nothing," he shrugged, reopening his book. He leafed through its pages a few times, but the Pharaoh wasn't actually reading anything. Had Kiya not been so anxious beside him, she would have realized this. A minute passed and silence still reigned over the elevator. Their first time together was interesting, but perhaps their new friendship had already fallen into a rut?

"All right," Kiya began, standing up, "I'm bothering you. I'll just--"

"Howwasyourdate?"

Kiya retook her position on the elevator floor. "Pardon?"

"How was your date?" the Pharaoh asked again, normally this time. "I heard the two of you and Larry speaking last night. Larry told me he seemed 'nice'. How did it go, Kiya?"

"The date was all right," she answered, deciding that she needed a template for this sort of question. "Keith is a good person. He would make a much better brother than _Horem_."

"That's..." Ahkmenrah nodded a few times before he finished, "good. He must be an interesting character. Oh, you said you needed to tell me something about him, by the way? About your brother, Horem?"

Kiya breathed deeply before she began to tell him all about her brother; how they had grown up together with their tutors as they traversed the archaeological sites–both known and unknown, both great and seemingly insignificant–of the world. They never stayed in just one place, never cemented any friends Kiya could remember, and as each year passed Horem would get just a little more irritating. She used to confide in her older brother until they reached their late teens, which was when he became very obnoxious (a prick, as she had mentioned before) and nearly unbearable already. Ahkmenrah was told of many of Horem's jokes and pranks, his teasing, and his constant need for attention. And Kiya would have ended it there, too, had there not been a smidgeon of guilt in her, which forced her to tell the Pharaoh about how Horem had just defended her the day before (though she did leave out the part where she took her frustration out on him afterward).

Ahkmenrah was silent throughout the entire time that Kiya disclosed this to him, keeping true to Nick's word.

"Well? What do you think?" Kiya asked him. She had Keith's opinion on the matter; now she wanted the thoughts of a three-thousand year old Pharaoh, a man who had reigned over a great empire and kept the peace for as long as he lived.

Sitting up straight and placing his hands on his thighs, the Pharaoh began to speak. "Your brother does sound rather childish, always seeking attention and teasing you; and Keith may sound like a better alternative to such a person, but...he's not your brother, that Keith. Horem is. No matter how irritating, no matter how terrible, how...awful he might be to you sometimes, he is your brother. And judging by the way he defended you before that professor of yours, your brother loves you. You may expect him to be more cultured, to have more tact because he is older, but if this is not the case, then as the more refined one you must find a way around it. So long as he does not hurt you, Horem Ganzouri is a good man. He just needs your patience."

And that was that. Toward the end of Ahkmenrah's assessment (during which he looked her in the eye seriously, like the king he truly was), Kiya had taken to poking at Nick's old book, partially because she was annoyed by what seemed to be the Pharaoh's taking Horem's side and partially because she knew he was right; because she was beginning to feel a lot more shame than she usually did. Now, Kiya was the kind of person who could ignore her shame so long as it came in small doses. She did feel shame for taking her anger for Professor Karim out on Horem after he risked his grades for her, but no one had gotten angry with her for it, so that small amount of shame she felt from it, she could ignore for the time being. But now, with Ahkmenrah's words, with all his talk of kinship and being the mature one–which Kiya had always thought herself to be–she actually felt that Keith was...wrong. That she was wrong.

Of course, Kiya could never admit such a thing. Her pride wouldn't be able to take it. She couldn't imagine any man allowing his brother to do that... Unless the King spoke from experience?

Oh!

"Is that how you were with your brother? With Kahmunrah?"

Ahkmenrah's stately countenance disappeared, and once again he was the boy King of Egypt. "With Kahmunrah, I...tried to be as peaceful and untroubling as possible."

Kiya gave herself a mental slap. How was it that she always, somehow, managed to ask him such depressing questions? Wednesday, it was about his death. Today, it was his older brother... It was time to use the surprisingly effective plan of action of most males, Horem and Mr. Daley included: change the subject.

"So tell me, Ahkmenrah, as I am _very_ curious–what was it like to grow up in Amarna? Your father had a palace there, did he not?"

His eyes lit up again. Success! "It was wonderful," he said, and he said it with so much gaiety and nostalgia that although he did not at all describe the palace, Kiya wanted so much to have been there and to have experienced it with him. "You know, Kiya, my mother was the most..."

"The most what?"

Shaking his head as if in confusion, he spoke again. "My mother was very beautiful. She was kind and patient, always, and she loved the three of us so much."

"The three of you?" Kiya repeated, "I wasn't aware you had another sibling. From what I've studied, you and Kahmunrah were her only children. Unless you speak of one of your sisters?"

"No, my sisters had all grown up and married by the time I could walk. I had a playmate. He lived with us in the castle, but he wasn't a slave. We were born on the same day, I remember, though we did not meet until we were three or four years of age; he was a brother and a best friend to me, and my mother cherished him almost as if he were her own son. We were seventeen when my father gave me the crown, and as the previous one had died just months earlier, I gave him the position of commander-in-chief of my armies. I remember many from my court always said that we were quite the duo."

The stenographer in Kiya's brain took this all down as the girl herself nodded in amazement. "I know you appointed a man as young as yourself as the commander-in-chief of your armies, but I never–and the world, too–knew that you'd grown up with him! That you were the best of friends...!"

Ahkmenrah smiled, and in her excitement Kiya missed the melancholic tinge his eyes. "Yes, he was my commander-in-chief until there came a day when--"

The boy King stopped abruptly when the elevator opened. In rushed one of the civil war men, who looked to have been pressing the 'up' button as rapidly as he could; as the door closed, he turned to the two and put a gloved index finger over where his lips should have been.

"Hello, Janssen," said Ahkmenrah, giving him a small wave of his hand. The boy King felt some annoyance for the man's sudden interruption, but it was a silly thing to get angry over, so he decided to keep it to himself. "What are you doing? Where are Saim and Colby?"

Janssen shrugged and proceeded to make numerous hand signals. The only one Kiya vaguely understood was his pointing to the elevator buttons, to which Ahkmenrah answered, "Oh, yes, I'm sure Kiya wouldn't mind. Would you?"

So as not to be rude (the man was Ahkmenrah's friend, and as such she did not want to offend him), Kiya shook her head. "No, go ahead."

Bowing slightly to them, Janssen turned and pressed the second floor button. The lift rose, and once it brought them to the second floor, the civil war soldier leapt out of the elevator like a man on fire. Kiya and Ahkmenrah, alone again, watched him disappear into the African wild life exhibit; Kiya did so with much confusion.

"What was he saying?" she asked her companion as the door closed. "Do they even really have names, those men?"

"Of course they do," replied Ahkmenrah, sounding almost reproachful that she even asked, but continued peacefully. "The Eskimos, the Swahilians, the Huns, the Civil War men, and many of the other exhibits are playing hide and seek, the seekers being Meriwether and William."

"Who?"

"Lewis and Clark."

"Oh."

"Yes. I hope they manage to make their way out of home base!" Ahkmenrah added with a small laugh, but after failing to elicit the response he wanted from Kiya (anything but a blank stare, which was given mostly because she had no idea what he was talking about), he shook his head. "Forgive me. That was cruel."

"Sorry, I just didn't understand--"

The elevator door opened again, this time revealing a very anxious looking ostrich, which pressed the lobby button once it entered.

"Do you think it's part of the hide and seek game they're playing?" Kiya asked Ahkmenrah.

As if it had heard and comprehended her, the ostrich began to make a deep humming sound with its mouth, and then punctuated its last remark with a loud squawk as the door to the ground floor opened.

Squinting, Ahkmenrah watched the ostrich run off like the wind and shrugged. "I'm afraid I can't understand animals."

Kiya covered her mouth and snickered quietly. Ahkmenrah was so wise, and yet his childlike honesty was so...so...something. Bah. Silly unexplainable thing. Before the boy King could ask what the cause of her silent laughing was, she stood up and motioned to the museum lobby. Yawning, she said, "I think we should find somewhere else we can talk...in peace. If you don't mind."

"I think it's a fine idea," said Ahkmenrah with a small grin; Kiya found it was perplexingly hard not to return a smile when it came from him.

The two spoke of many things as they exited the elevator and searched for a new place to discuss things. Kiya forgot all about her mission to interview Ahkmenrah about his lifestyle three thousand years ago, and had instead taken to listening intently to him as he told her of the many quirks and habits of the different museum characters he had come to know over the past few months. It was a very entertaining topic of conversation which sustained them for at least an hour and a half, and by the time they reached their new spot, Kiya knew near half of the museum characters already.

"Teddy and Sacagawea look wonderful together, don't they?" yawned Kiya, stretching her arms and leaning back against them. Her legs dangled on the ledge of the same back exit she'd sat by with Nick earlier; Ahkmenrah sat beside her, still deciding on whether he would emulate Kiya's sitting position with his bare legs.

"They're like the mother and father, really," Ahkmenrah laughed, "Of the museum, I mean. They're good people. They're all good people. Even Atilla, whom I know you dislike. I'm sure the Mayans have some good in them, too, though they're still locked up in that diorama..."

Waiting for her response, Ahkmenrah glanced at Kiya. Lips parted, eyelids closed over arrestive dark brown eyes, body weight focused on hands, with elbows almost giving way--oh! Reaching over just in time to hold her back, the Pharaoh saved Kiya's head from being smashed to bits like a ripe coconut and instead held her neck in the fold of his elbow. "Kiya," he whispered, "Wake up. You must return home and rest for the evening."

"No," Kiya grumbled and shook her head, causing her companion to pull her closer so as to narrow the chances of her rolling off his grasp and breaking her skull. "I'm staying with you until the sun rises."

"You can't," he replied, as if they were talking in normal conversation, "You're tired. You must return home."

"I said no!" Kiya squeezed her eyes shut and frowned miserably, mumbling an incoherent, "'m staying with you...till sunrise. Mr. Daley does all the time. Me too."

"I would like for you to stay with me until sunrise, Kiya, but you can't," Ahkmenrah insisted, attempting to lift her. "Larry Daley has a different sleeping pattern. You aren't even thinking clearly anymore. You need your rest."

"Fine," she sighed, licking her lips and swallowing, half-asleep. "But you...gotta promise you'll be here...t'morrow. Nick too. 'Cause I'll be back. I'll be..." Yawning for the umpteenth time, Kiya held her palms together and placed them below her head, then moved to rest herself on Ahkmenrah's right lap. "...back...promise, Ahk..."

"I promise, Kiya," he replied quietly, and was finally able to lift her from his lap. From under his Usekh, Ahkmenrah removed his overcoat, made with threads of beaten gold, and tossed it over the dirty ground. "Wait here," he told her, slowly lifting her and placing her on his coat, though he knew she was no longer listening. "I will fetch Larry and ask him to send you home."

He quickly returned with Larry at his heels. "Oh, man," Larry grimaced. "DId you try waking her up, Ahkmenrah?"

"Yes, but she is quite stubborn," replied the Pharaoh, bending down to carry her sleeping figure again. He could feel his knees about to buckle as he stood, and not because the sight of her sleeping peacefully was breathtaking. Which it...well, he wouldn't comment on that. Grunting, he turned to the night guard. "How do we send her home, Larry?"

"I can get her a cab, but I can't leave the museum." Larry looked his Pharaoh friend over. Half-naked except for that weird collar thing of his since his coat was all messed up on the snow, shivering slightly, and carrying a girl more than half his weight. Did Pharaohs even do manual labor before? "Do you...need help with that? Want my coat or something? It's pretty cold out, what with the snow...I know you're still not used to it."

"I'm all right," he smiled weakly. "You know, Larry, I could borrow your casual attire, bring her home myself, and simply take a cab back before the sunrise."

"Uh..." Larry only pretended to think about it. "Nope, not happening. I'll just get her a cab home and make sure he takes care of her. Really, some kids' sleeping habits these days..." It took some arguing, but Larry managed to convince his Pharaoh friend that he knew most of the cab drivers who passed by the museum at night and that whoever he asked to send the girl in his arms home could be trusted. After much cheek-slapping and shaking which resulted in getting slapped back, he also managed to get Kiya's address out of her.

Hidden behind the equestrian statue of Theodore Roosevelt, Ahkmenrah watched his friend place his new one in a vehicle with a complete stranger. There was some worry in him, but the Pharaoh knew to trust Larry Daley.

"Goodbye for now, Kiya Ganzouri."

=-==-=

Almost an hour later, the cab pulled up to Kiya's residence hall at 334 East 26th Street, a building surrounded by a quiet neighborhood. With the exception of an animatedly conversing couple by the door, there was no one in sight. A friend of Larry's who had already been paid in advance for his services, the cab driver opened the rear door and shook his passenger in an attempt to wake her. She curled into a ball and hissed at his touch in reply.

"Come on, girl," he said, raising his voice, "Wake up."

Another hiss.

"Hey," Larry's friend groaned, pulling her out the door by the arm, "we don't have all morning!"

The couple by the door hushed and went to see what the commotion was all about. "Excuse me, uh, sir," said the man, a tall, broad-shouldered Indian whose eyes were obscured by the lack of light, "Is there a problem here?"

"Yeah, kid here fell asleep and won't move!"

A resident of the building, the woman released her lover's arm and came closer to Kiya, whose head and arms were hanging off the side of the cab. Her clear blue eyes flashed with recognition. "I know her, Naveen!" she said, her blonde hair loosening from its tie as she turned abruptly to pull on her boyfriend's hand. "She lives on my floor."

"Oh?" Glancing at the girl's face, Naveen knew he had never seen her before, but thought that she looked awfully familiar anyway. "We should help her, then."

"That would be nice, yeah," said the driver, who'd watched their exchange with little interest before he tugged on Kiya's arm again. "Come on, kid, you're home!"

"What's her name, Shaila?" asked Naveen, moving to help bring the girl out of the car. "Maybe calling her repeatedly will wake her."

"Um..." Shaila shook her head. "We didn't actually get that far into the getting to know each other bit of the conversation before I helped her and sent her on her merry way."

"Another speedy O'Connor service, was it?" he gave her a playful grin.

"Hardy har har," she rolled her eyes, and, taking one of Kiya's arms up on her shoulder, motioned to the door. "Just help me get her into the building. Now, where does this girl keep her keys...?"

* * *

The end!

I had you fooled for a second there, didn't I? ...I didn't? Okay, never mind. *grumble* I never get anyone. Anyway, chapters seem to get worse and worse by the day, and I'm so sorry for that. I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm running out of inspiration for some reason. Some moments I'm all psyched up to write here, and other times I'm sitting in front of my laptop and staring at its screen, wondering what I'm doing in the first place. It's weird.

Just so you know, the **Usekh** is the circular collar Ahkmenrah wears.

Congratulations to bean15 and Elven Heart993 for getting the two cameo roles, and to Bandit Lumia for guessing who I was correctly!

GOSH. I remember when what happened to Kiya happened to my aunt before, when she was just about 25, I think. She'd fallen asleep when we were watching a movie and we had to drag her all the way out of the theatre to the car! Good thing her then-nice boyfriend (turns out he was a *curse word curse word curse word* cheater, something my best friend and I had the unfortunate chance of seeing firsthand first) managed to carry her. 'Twas insane. But also fun, because the way she acted so childishly was HILARIOUS. (Despite the weird looks we were all getting, too.)

**Random fact:** Zahi Ganzouri, Jr. did not truly die of natural causes.

And to all you superbly fantastic and marvelously amazing reviewers(!!):

**phangirl**: Explained through PM, and thanks again for correcting me! Errors now fixed! Glad you like the story, thanks for reading! :D

**Dawnmist 11**: Thanks for saying that, and thanks for reviewing! Ahkmenrah was here today! Wheee!

**Elven Heart 993**: I WAS wondering about that--about Kahmunrah sending Larry off to find the tablet's code, I mean. Even if his parents 'changed the code', he should still have been able to read it himself. I really wonder what the extent of the tablet's powers are and how differently it can be read. In the first movie, Ahkmenrah says something to it (I say that because I'm not sure if he was just commanding it to what he wanted or if he was reading off of it) that makes all the museum exhibits return to the museum, but in the second one there's some kind of way of pressing it when it's on that black wall/door thing that allows it to open the door to the underworld. Bleh. Guess those little girls at the museum were wrong! Haha. Anyway, hopefully I can incorporate that into the story...if I don't forget about it. I forget about things easily (hence forgetting what age Horem, Annie, and Kiya actually were). But yeah, I repeat, Kahmunrah's character was just HILARIOUS. Some of the comedy in the movie seemed forced, but Hank Azaria's was never that way to me. XD Although, for the sake of preserving the action/adventure genre this story is in, Kahmunrah in the fic will be slightly, if not actually very OOC. I mean, the fic takes the story as it is in the real world, not in the funny, less realistic world (because of its characters) the second film really delves into, so Kahmunrah's quips in the movie might not appear here at all. (Yep, this is just me making excuses for the sake of my story. I'm a bad writer. I didn't anticipate Kahmunrah's character to be that hilarious, so...yeah.) I still love his movie self, though!

**bean15**: I just love that bit with the "Kahmunrah can have my funny bone"-- because I'm sure that applies to all of us here. XD If they make a third movie, though, I don't think they could make one with Kahmunrah still in it, since he disintegrated into the underworld in the second movie...unless they retcon things so that Kahmunrah somehow survived and came back for revenge. I'd still watch it even if they did that, though, just to see Ahkmenrah and Kahmunrah interact! And get more than 5 divine minutes of Rami Malek('s acting), of course... _ Hahaha! And one more **_huzzah_** for long reviews!

**Bandit Lumia**: Again, thanks for reading! :D And reviewing. I hope you enjoyed this chapter!

**Me Myself and I and Us and**: Yepyep, the Donnas did a version of that! And YES, I did end up singing like a fool to that a lot, especially when we went out of town last weekend; it got me dancing in public while I was listening to it on my iPod near this restroom lounge, and I thought there was no one in there with me because my music was on so loud...I was wrong. Good thing nobody knew me! Heheh. Listened to_ Princess of Egypt_ and_ Egyptian Dance_! _Egyptian Dance _is sooooo crazy, yet fun to move your head to. XD As for Princess of Egypt, I listened to it mostly when I was writing Keith's parts because the song fits him somewhat (whoops spoiler? hmmm). Yeah, Kiya annoys me, too. Horem is bounds of awesome, though! XD Ooh, **speculation**! I love those. And conspiracies, and theories and the like. Heeheeeeee. Yep, Keith and Ramy are certainly connected. But how?

**ShiningGalaxy**: Thank you very much! I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter! :)

**Vale Angel 1987**: It's good that you enjoyed the second movie! Anyway, thank you for reading and reviewing! I'm glad you like the story.

**Raine44354**: To answer your (was it rhetorical?) question: Maybe! Haha, I love speculation! Thanks for reviewing!

**NiminariAmriath**: Yes, the movie rocks! :) The second one not as much, but watch it for the humor (and not the plot) anyway. Happy you like the story, though, and as for Keith being the Pharaoh's reincarnation...maybe! Reincarnation is quite a factor in this story.

**create and celebrate**: I wish I could put Ahkmenrah in more of the chapters, too! :'( But thank you for saying that! And here's an update just because you were all nice enough to ask! =D

**Wolfinson**: Haha, glad ya like the story! I hope you enjoyed this update!

**chagrinlullaby**: Woohoo! I wish I could do that one word thing. All I can ever do is ramble on and on and on...case in point. **_Huzzah_**s for words, Kiya, and Horeeeem! And Keith? Attacking people? That sounds...like something I will not comment on for the time being! Heheh. Poor Keith is getting no love right now! Sugar IS good! As a child I'd steal the free ones from restaurants... . and eat them all up when I got home! How was that for hyper? XD

**KariFlameUser**: Aaaaand Ahkmenrah pops in again! :o Thank you lots for reviewing!

A thousand thank you's to everyone who reviewed! I needn't repeat that you lot are superbly fantastic and marvelously amazing! ...Oops.

If anything needs to be explained or if you'd just like to comment comment comment (!!), just state it in a review or PM me and I'll gladly answer it.

Thanks also goes to everyone who put this story in their alert lists and their favorite story lists! Feel free to drop by any tiiiime. (Or make your presence known through anything other than an alert or a hit in the Story Traffic. You'd be more super crazy awesome that way.)

And one last _**HUZZAH** _for speculation!

See you all again soon (hopefully)!

J-W


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary: Post Night at the Museum; begins before the second movie. Unluckily assigned to write a research paper on the public's level of interest in Egyptology, Kiya must visit the Museum of Natural History every day for two weeks and stay by Ahkmenrah's coffin. It is a boring task, but when she takes to talking to the still Pharaoh, life begins to get just a little more interesting. And interesting isn't even the half of it.**

**Disclaimer**: all the characters in the movie and its universe belong to...well, the people who made the movie! The only characters I own are Kiya, her friends, and her family. Well, some of them. Shaila O'Connor and Naveen Sitaram belong to **bean15**, while Kesi and Sadiki belong to **Elven Heart993**. Please don't use them without permission.

OH MY GOSH. I'VE MISSED YOU ALL SO MUCH. And I really missed writing this. I'm sorry, I've been a douche and I let life get in the way. Sometimes even when I wasn't really doing anything. I don't know what happened! I lost my groove somehow. But now I'm back and you can expect updates!  
Wow, I'm actually in college myself now. Not as awkward as Kiya as I thought I'd be, but still pretty awkward, haha! Anyway, I don't really have much to say on this chapter except that I'm sorry it's short, considering I was gone for so long. I really wanted to update already, so...yeah. It's a thousand words and a half shorter than the last chapter, but I swear I'll make Chapter 8 even longer than Chapter 6! Enjoy!

Sorry if the writing is weaker than the previous chapters. I haven't written in forever, and I'm still in the process of getting back into my groove. Please forgive me :((

* * *

**Chapter 7**

Kiya woke with a start and an aching stomach. It felt as if a heavy weight had come over her eyes. Opening her mouth to groan, she realized her throat was parched, too. What happened last night?

"Water," she called out hoarsely, squeezing her heavy eyes shut and stumbling out of bed to close the blinds. The light was blinding, and there was a monotonous whining in her right ear that refused to be shaken off. Only when she'd pulled the blinds open and closed repeatedly without any results did she open her eyes again, slowly, until the light settled into nothingness and her vision cleared.

The sun hadn't come around yet. The light had come from her lamp, which hadn't been very bright to begin with, so Kiya supposed she must have been sleeping for a very long time for such a dim light to affect her. Feeling very foolish, she held her throbbing temples and set herself to getting a glass of water to drink. Was this how Horem felt the morning after his first party?

When one of his friends invited him to attend a senior's birthday party in freshman year, Horem hadn't been very popular in school yet. Annie found the prospect of attending a senior party exciting, and, having wanted to please her new friend, Kiya agreed to come along. She had high hopes for it, believing conversations with older students would be engaging, but as they entered the vicinity, she found herself deeply disappointed. Lit only by seizure-inducing, flashing lights, the place was crowded with sots, all of them too busy engaging the alcohol to engage anyone in sober conversation. It was here that she met Gavin, who recognized her from the times when she passed by their residence hall to give Horem things he had forgotten in school. Horem had long since been persuaded by their upperclassmen to get himself drunk and had taken Annie with him, so Gavin was the only other sane being in the party.

Having only been invited by one of his residence hall friends, he wasn't an MEIS student, but he had seemed to know a fairly large amount of things concerning Kiya's favorite topic. She wasn't as miserable as she thought she would be keeping his company. But then Horem found them, saying absurd things he wouldn't have spoken of otherwise; Annie was still following him around, trying to sit him down and stop him from embarrassing himself further. Kiya wondered why Annie didn't end their friendship then, and why the girl allowed Horem to court her, knowing he was an idiot. She herself had been disgusted at the sight of her older brother completely drunk and would already have left, had Annie not begged her and Gavin to stay and help bring Horem back to his residence hall safely. Gavin agreed, having been trying for the last half hour to convince his rambling drunk of a friend to let him. Annie made it so with an uncharacteristically vicious knock to his head. Horem insisted (and insists, to this day) that this was when he fell in love with her. Kiya just thought he was an idiot.

...An idiot with whom she still wasn't on speaking terms. Thanks to a fault of hers, maybe, but... Oh, why was she even thinking of him? Frowning, she poured herself two glasses of water and told herself that the whole point of her recounting her memories was to explain why she had a headache, a stomachache, and a hoarse throat that morning.

"I should return to the museum tonight," said Kiya, testing her voice. It was a little less raspy. After pouring herself another glass of water, she added thoughtfully, "After I finish my laundry."

Another glass of water later, as well as a walk to the basement to do her laundry with three trips to the bathroom in between, Kiya stepped out of the elevator and into the empty white lobby of her residence hall. That made sense. The security guard was the only one ever around while everybody else enjoyed sunny Saturday mornings like this. Kiya had never spoken to any of the guards around the residence halls, but this one recognized her, as evident with her smile.

"Good morning!" she greeted Kiya. It was a wonder to all the residents of the residence hall of 26th street how she could stay so happy when she had the shift from past sunset to past sunrise. "Awake now, are you?"

Surprised, Kiya repeated the words in her mind. "You know me?"

"Of course," said the lady. "It's my job to make sure that the kids who get in and out of here actually live here."

"Oh." Kiya nodded, standing by the door and preparing to open it for herself. "Of course. I'll be going then."

"That and you looked pretty sloshed last night. It's hard to forget a face like that."

Kiya looked back at her. "You mean...drunk? I seemed drunk last night?"

The lady seemed shocked, too. "That bad, huh? Yeah, Shaila and that boyfriend of hers helped you in, and after bidding him an abrupt good night, thanks to you, we woke you up a little and got you back to your room."

Kiya resented that. The woman didn't have to make it sound so horrible. "What did you say her name was?"

The guard was accustomed to this straightforward attitude from many of the students and let it pass. "Shaila O'Connor. One of the friendlier kids in this building."

"That description certainly doesn't give me much to start with," Kiya thought to say, but kept it to herself and let herself out of the building. "Thank you, ma'am. Good day."

Kiya made her way past the silence of the neighborhood and down to the clattering subway with a slight hunch and her hands in her pockets. So she had seemed drunk when she came home last night, and a girl named Shaila O'Connor and her lover helped her inside the building. That told her absolutely nothing. Her eyebrows were set downward as she found an empty seat between an old woman and a young boy who fancied blasting his music into his ears; all was quiet, as least, as much as things could be in the subway, until she remembered laying her head on something scratchy. Someone carried her last night and placed her in a car that smelled of beeswax, and she hung off the edge of the car later on, with someone else telling her to get up, get up already...

"I knew it!" she gasped, soft enough not to gather the attention of all those in the train, but loud and exaggeratedly gesticulated enough to convince the old woman and the teenage boy beside her that she was just another lonely nut in Manhattan. Ignoring them, she set her hands on her lap and tried harder to remember. There was a long conversation with Ahkmenrah which led to relaxing outside the back entrance of the museum...and she had fallen asleep. Without having eaten dinner. Of course! The stomachache was caused by the lack of food. She always had a hoarse throat when she slept too late or too early, and the headache must have been caused by both.

Kiya reached the museum sooner than she was used to and, after some apprehension towards Ahkmenrah's jackals, stood beside his sarcophagus with her arms crossed. There wasn't anything coherent she could say to him with all the questions muddling her thoughts, so Kiya decided not to say anything until she figured out what happened the night before. What was she even talking about with Ahkmenrah? Why did he allow her to fall asleep in his presence?

Kiya gasped. She slapped Mr. Daley last night when he'd tried to wake her!

That was embarrassing... Although the fact that she managed to clear that Mr. Daley was the only living human with the power to send her home and was the human who did just that eased her somewhat. Just somewhat. There was still the matter of repaying him and making up for literally abusing his kindness. Hoping she hadn't lost a friend, she remembered that Rebecca was currently visiting her parents. There wouldn't be anyone she could consult about how to actually mean an apology.

"What do you think?" she asked Ahkmenrah. There was no need to face him. "Horem I can't bring myself to apologise to at the moment, but Mr. Daley... I suppose I could just hand him the money for the cab...get on my knees, maybe?" she laughed. No. "I _am _sorry, but I'm not sure how to show that I actually mean it. He has experienced much in life. What if apologies seem trite to him now?"

There were figures by the doorway now- tourists. Knowing she had no tour guide friend to save her from any sort of embarrassment she might cause to herself, Kiya felt her knees shake. She had never quite cared before. Why did it matter today?

The answer to that didn't seem to matter to her, as she flipped her cellphone out and pretended to punch numbers into the keypad. Touching the 'call' button lightly, she placed her phone to her ear, opening her mouth slightly before laughing into the receiver.

"I was about to apologize," Kiya explained, making the appropriate expressions with her face, "when I realized the hypocrisy of doing so. Not sure why I'm like this today... It's a simple matter. I'll go to Mr. Daley and repay him, then ask for his forgiveness. If he refuses... I don't know. At least I'll have done all I can. On that note, did you do all you could to wake me yesterday? I can't imagine myself so sleepy so as not to have woken up at your call...

"The point is, I feel terrible for falling asleep during our conversation...which, admittedly, I can't even remember anymore. Although I haven't forgotten what we talked about before we reached the exit. Who knew that one ostrich really was so desperate for attention? I mean, I did notice something odd about it when it squawked right in our faces, but I wasn't sure what then. You know, I think I remember seeing it dancing on top of the docent table, too!" she laughed. "Thank you for telling me so much about your friends here. I never would have guessed that Teddy would fancy Sacagawea, honestly, or that the civil war men would ever make up! When Nick told me how chaotic this place was when Mr. Daley first took over, I never imagined things like the civil war men really fighting with each other! I imagined it as more of an act, you know, to keep the chaos they had grown so accustomed to since your arrival."

Kiya paused as a couple eyeing her oddly passed her to reach Ahkmenrah's coffin. She would congratulate herself later for making her pathetic phone call excuse seem more realistic, but for now she shook her head, trying to shake the embarrassment off, and began speaking again when she could no longer see their eyes filled with pity for the crazy girl in the Egyptian display. "Anyway... I'm coming again tonight. And I promise," she laughed, staring at the floor tiles as the couple left murmuring closely to each other, "I won't fall asleep again."

"Kiya?"

Kiya's phone found itself slammed shut and in her pants pocket before its owner could take another breath. She hadn't expected anyone to find her there so early in the morning, least of all Keith. Then again, as an Egyptology student who had participated in a many digs already, he was likely used to waking even before the sun rose. An interesting thought then flew into Kiya's mind: Ramy could take notes from Keith; it would be such an experience, bringing two so knowledgeable in the ways of her homeland together.

"Kiya," repeated Keith, right before her now, an amused grin playing on his lips. "Are you home?"

"Yes, yes," replied Kiya, batting the hand he'd raised to wave in her face away with a chuckle. "How did you find me here?"

Keith peered about himself oddly. "You're a lady on a mission, Kiya. You aren't exactly hard to find."

"That...makes no sense."

"I didn't think it would," he shrugged, then looked into her eyes with a grin. "Lunch? You and me, Kiya? What do you think?"

Kiya narrowed her eyes at the man. "Not unless I can pay for my own meal."

"I'm afraid I can't-"

"Then I," said Kiya, glancing over her shoulder as if to make sure Ahkmenrah's sarcophagus was still there, "am rooted to this very spot."

"And starve...?"

Kiya shrugged him off, pursing her lips to the side to whistle, but the off-key melody she produced betrayed her difficulty with keeping up with such a back-and-forth conversation. It was hard to muster such a thing with one she did not consider too close a close friend.

"Fine," sighed Keith after a few seconds, "You may pay for your own meal. Shall we?"

"You may lead."

Keith led them to a restaurant some walking distance (to an Egyptology graduate student perhaps, noted Kiya when she found herself a little out of breath once they reached the place) away from the museum. It was small and cozy and served allegedly authentic Greek dishes, and inside it smelled of some strong aroma therapy fragrance Annie had once convinced Kiya to join her in. Never having enjoyed the local food in Greece during her family's stay there, Kiya chose a generic pasta dish. Keith found himself asking for a dish he thought palatable, judging by the picture on the pretty velvet menu on the table.

"I wouldn't recommend that," said Kiya when the waitress left, unable to keep from speaking her mind when she knew she just _knew_ about something. "It may look nice in the picture, but it turns out very odd when it is actually there, staring at you."

"You've tried it?" asked Keith, laughing at her unsavory description.

"No. It was the first thing my brother ate when we went to Greece. Our mother's friend forced him to finish his plate, but once he swallowed the last bite, he retched on her."

"Ah, yes," said Keith, a distant look in his eyes, "your brother. Have you made up?"

Kiya shook her head. "We fought; again. It's my fault this time. I admit I can be prideful, often. He was only trying to protect me..."

"Oh, Kiya," said Keith, his voice filled with compassion as he held a hand out to squeeze hers in comfort. "I'm sure you did nothing wrong. There are times when we must bend to the will of those who deserve our respect, but...you must have done it upon his provocation."

"Perhaps," she muttered, paying no mind to his hand on hers. "I_ am_ easily provoked. But I may need to stop blaming him for so many things. He is my brother, after all. Isn't it my great task, my great undertaking to love him no matter what?"

Keith paused, taking her words in. "_No_," he said, finally. "Sometimes, family is just an accident of...DNA. If they do things to hurt you, then they are not worth your love. You know how invaluable your love is, don't you?"

Kiya burst into a chuckle at his wording and withdrew her hand to cover her mouth. Upon seeing his somewhat wronged expression, she apologised. "I am sorry. It's just- I have never heard that one before. My love has never been of much value to humankind."

"Then you don't know-!" Keith began, an intense look in his eyes, but caught himself and regained his composure at the sight of Kiya's shock. "Forgive me. An old memory, it-it resurfaced. I suppose I still feel strongly about it."

Always curious, Kiya glanced from side to side before leaning on the table. "About what?"

"In my earlier life, I... I met a breathtaking woman. She possessed sharp wit, skillful oratory, and was of the highest breeding. Unfortunately, she did not understand how meaningful her love was to me. When she could no longer take what she thought was a loveless life, she took her own," said Keith, sadly.

"My condolences," said Kiya, bowing her head. "I am certain she was a fine woman."

"She was," Keith replied. Kiya nodded, unable to think of something to follow it up with, and so was greatly relieved when the waitress returned with their food.

They stayed silent until Keith spoke, suddenly lively again, of another unlucky snake encounter in Egypt.

* * *

"You were right," said Keith, holding the door for Kiya as they exited the Greek restaurant. He'd have scratched his tongue out if it wouldn't repulse her. "That dish was..." There were no words. "Just awful."

It was a god thing Kiya was gifted with focus, or she would have forgotten that Keith was at all there and snorted, laughing derisively, "I told you!" She hadn't thought of doing such a childish thing since she was a little girl with Horem and their playmates, the children of their mother's friends, but she found herself struck with a sudden nostalgia, as if remembering her childhood more clearly would provide some enlightenment. Nostalgia was so abhorrent. She hated longing for the past. When she and her mother still spoke...

"W-Well," Kiya forced out, trying not to be shaken by her straying thoughts (so much for focus), "you might have ordered something else."

"True," laughed Keith. "But I believe in trying new things. What do you think?"

This was the spontaneity Kiya meant, the spontaneity that she lacked. Why put herself through something she didn't believe she'd like? Granted, it was under Professor Goedet's coercion that she met Ahkmenrah, but in most cases she liked her routines just fine. Still, she respected his opinion, though she couldn't understand it. "If it is your preference."

Keith smiled. She was making this harder than he'd thought she would. Then again, when hadn't she been hard to please? "You're taking Egyptology after your undergraduate studies, are you not?"

"Yes, why do you ask?"

"When you begin to participate in excavations, every day will be a new experience."

"Doubtless, but I think...I would enjoy it," said Kiya, truthfully. Although Keith did have something of a point. When she was young, her grandparents had funded her mother's excavations. Along with this came luxuries unheard of for some archaeologists, like gourmet dishes and private jets. It was mostly because Daphne Ganzouri wanted a close eye on her children's education and her parents-in-law respected her decision, not that it meant they couldn't spoil their grandchildren. So the little Kiya Ganzouri had still been out dusting dirt and age from the remnants of history then, of course, but truly, she had been spoonfed. And here she had come to think of herself as a hardened archaeologist even before she received her degree. But in her defense, she thought, though her body wasn't that of a veteran Egyptologist, at least her mind still was.

Keith noted the wrinkling of Kiya's nose and cleared his throat. "Oh, yes. It's in your blood."

Kiya's face brightened. "Yes. Yes, it certainly is."

There was a small grin on Keith's lips. It was the sort of grin a person gave to another when they expected the other to react in a certain way to certain words, and knew this because they had known the person for a very long time. Had Kiya seen it, she would have thought it very odd, indeed.

"Where to now?" asked Keith as they rounded a corner. "Would you like to take an after-lunch walk with me?"

"Oh," was Kiya's reply. There was a short pause before she continued, "I was planning to return to the gallery. I might have already missed some visitors..."

"That's all right. May I keep you company, then?"

Kiya gave it some thought. She knew she didn't want him to come, because the gallery was her time with Ahkmenrah and his jackals and hers alone (and she wasn't so sure she could keep up with Keith's swift repartee again), but it would be a new experience. If Keith was correct, then she'd have to get herself accustomed to new things. "Very well."

They had started for the subway when Kiya spotted a familiarly neat tuft of dark hair in the near distance. When she came close enough to recognize the eyes that had always contained some deeper sense of wisdom, she gave a slight wave and approached the man. He, in turn, smiled, albeit with some confusion.

"Kiya," said Professor Goedet, shifting the paper bag he carried into his left arm. "I'd been wondering of your whereabouts. What are you doing here, so far from the museum?"

Kiya knew she could trust Professor Goedet with her life, so she replied honestly. "I accompanied my friend here to lunch. I was just on my way back, professor. You were wondering about me?"

"I thought to visit you and found you weren't there, is all," said the professor with a kind shrug. "How are you and young Horem?"

Kiya looked around uncomfortably "I hope to resolve it this week."

"Miss Lennon gave me the full account," replied the professor. "Not to treat you as a child again, but... I am aware you must be left to your own devices, but... you _know_ Horem wasn't to blame for failing to wake you in time?"

"I'm aware," Kiya sighed, her eyes falling to the side. And then she realized Keith was there. For some reason, she didn't like him seeing her weak, conforming to the will of another. The thought made her queasy. "Anyway, professor, this is my friend, Keith Kashani."

Professor Goedet stared at her as if she'd finally gone off the deep end and truly belonged in a mental institution. "Kiya...? Who are you talking of?"

"What?" Kiya blinked when she turned and saw for herself that Keith had disappeared. "That's...odd. I was certain he was behind me... Perhaps he left his wallet in the restaurant and returned for it."

"Who is this Keith and where did you meet him?" asked Professor Goedet, taking advantage of her openness, though still with a skeptic raise of the brow.

"He comes by the museum sometimes," answered Kiya, "to visit Ahkmenrah. He's an Egyptology graduate student in Cairo. Said his colleague sent him here to...Huh ." Kiya scratched the back of her head, something one of her pride hardly ever did. His reason was obscure...I'm not sure why, now. It was about Ahkmenrah."

The brow reached for the sky. Professor Goedet wondered when exactly she had begun to call the Pharaoh by his name. "He need only search for the research notes concerning His... concerning Ahkmenrah to learn more if he must. Visiting the tomb isn't necessary."

Kiya shrugged. "I can't explain his actions for him. In any case, he loves Egypt. It's admirable. But Annie and Horem know nothing of him, so...know that I share his existence with you in confidence. Please, professor?"

He wasn't sure the boy was even real, but Kiya's sanity had never really been in question. "All right, Kiya," he said, then checked his watch purposefully. "Ah. I suppose it is the right time for lunch..."

Kiya stepped out of Professor Goedet's way. "Take care, professor."

Professor Goedet gave Kiya a fatherly squeeze of the shoulder, returned her sentiments, and soon disappeared into the crowd, though not as quickly as Keith had.

"Ah, Kiya, there you are."

Kiya whirled and saw Keith approaching her with his hands in his pockets, as if she had been the one to lose him. "Where did you go?" she asked, "I saw one of my professors in the university, and all of a sudden you had disappeared..."

Keith smiled again. It was a smile of flattery again, as if he had never had anyone miss him. This wasn't true, of course, as he was adored in his hometown and in the city where he had gone to school. The women of Cairo hadn't stood a chance when he entered the university. New York was a completely different matter, of course, though the women her still fell for his deep set eyes left and right, and the awkward undergraduate he had found in the museum was a different world altogether. Keith touched the top of Kiya's head lightly and said, "I hope you didn't worry. I went and got us a cab, you see."

"Oh," again. Kiya hadn't actually wanted a cab. The subway had already grown on her, messy though it was. It would be rude to refuse his kindness, however. Had Horem been in his place he'd have told Kiya to hail them a cab. Perhaps not...she _was_ being rather unfair to him these days. She liked to forget that he was kind too, sometimes, when he remembered which of them was older. "Thank you, Keith."

"Always a pleasure," said the young man, and led the way to the taxi. It was a short ride to the museum, especially since Keith had taken to chatting with the driver. He really was so friendly and amiable; Kiya saw that now. He was an older, less immature Horem with how easily he seemed to speak with people, and she wondered what he was doing spending time with someone so routine as she.

They headed for the gallery as soon as they entered. Keith walked slowly, almost as if he were reluctant to enter the dark gallery. Personally, Kiya had found the environment exciting. If she had ever been prone to daydreaming, she would imagine how life in Ancient Egypt must have been. As inaccurate as The Mummy starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz was, she loved its portrayal of the palace, of bright rooms with dark secrets, gilded curtains and bronze-skinned gods, and gold, gold, gold. To accompany her secret love of sweets she had acquired a guilty pleasure for shiny objects, especially the classic allure of gold. She desired it not for its value; their family had plenty of it, after all, but it just looked so good on Ahkmenrah.

No! No. She meant it looked good on some people, especially Ahkmenrah. She wouldn't deny that.

Keith was still walking slowly. "You know," Kiya said to him, "you needn't accompany me if you must be somewhere else. Or if you'd rather not be here. I wouldn't take it against you."

"Oh, no," said Keith, the dull expression on his face turning into eagerness much too quickly, "I was simply taking my time. Admiring these jackals from afar and seeing how they fare up close." He stood before a jackal, arms crossed over his chest, and stared up at the thing. Had a stranger entered the gallery then, he would have thought that Keith and the jackal were in the middle of some unspoken battle.

Kiya stood beside him. "They're very daunting, aren't they?"

"Oh, yes," Keith answered almost patronizingly, though Kiya missed his tone. "They would be frightful enemies indeed."

Kiya almost laughed as she remembered her previous encounter with them. It hadn't actually been as funny as it had been terrifying, but that they listened to her and even bowed to her upon hearing their language pass from her lips, and that they spoke at all with those gravelly voices of theirs... It was almost more surprising than Ahkmenrah's nightly revival. "Those spears are in no way dull, either."

After some thought, Keith said, "It would be very painful to impaled on one of those, I presume."

Kiya laughed now. One...tries not to think such morbid thoughts."

Keith let out a short, amused "Hm." When he was sure Kiya wouldn't say any more, he turned to face her. "Kiya. What do you think of the legend of Ahkmen...of our Pharaoh's tablet? That it has the power to bring the dead back to life, and more?"

Kiya forced her eyes not to widen. The legend was no lie, of course. She had seen and felt that for herself. Despite Keith's great love for their homeland, she couldn't tell him. Perhaps especially because of it. She didn't know if he'd be so excited that he would share his newfound knowledge with the world. She herself earnestly wished to tell her grandparents that Baba Zahi's discovery was greater than the world had ever imagined, and that he and the Pharaoh should meet, but she was bound by her promise. And there was a nice feeling that came along with being asked to keep someone's secret and doing so, no matter how difficult. To Keith she replied, "It's...foolish, of course. Had the legend been true, Ahkmenrah would have awoken ages ago."

Keith quirked a quizzical brow. "You speak as if he only slumbers."

Kiya berated herself inwardly and saved with, "That _is_ what our Ancient forefathers wanted us to believe... I hope you don't mind me asking, by the way: what did your colleague send you here for?"

"I certainly don't mind," said Keith, cracking his knuckles before he spoke. "I participated in an excavation a few months earlier where we unearthed a new section of Heb's tomb. It contained another royal mummy whose sarcophagus had updated designs, first from Kahmunrah's tomb, and then from Ahkmenrah's and naturally, Heb's. I stopped by Manhattan to compare the material on the sarcophagus with the material from Ahkmerah's with the authorities. Soon I'll be off to Washington D.C. to check the materials from Kahmunrah's tomb. I didn't need to come here, of course, but I thought I owed the...boy King... a visit. For old time's sake."

Kiya was shocked at how willing Keith was to share about their findings. Her mother had always been secretive about their own and had instructed her to this way. She and Keith hadn't even something to bind them as friends, the way she, Nick, Mr. Daley, and Rebecca were bound by the secret of the museum. Then again, there was their love of Egypt. Yes, he must have seen in her his own passion for the Ancients and deemed her trustworthy enough. It was so curious. Who could it be? Now there would be four royal mummies in Heb's tomb. The first two had been Heb and his wife, Queen Amenia, and the third was an older woman, whose sarcophagus also carried material from Kahmunrah's tomb. And now this one... "Wait." Keith's words caught up with her. "For old time's sake?"

"My mother used to take me here every year as a child," said Keith, distantly. "Before I was aware of...anything. It'll be the first time I visit since a little before I turned twenty-three."

"Ah..." What would she say to that? "How interesting. So...where is this mummy being held? Do you have any idea who it might be?"

"In the University of Cairo, naturally," said Keith. "She'll be moved to a more secure location soon, however, until they figure out exactly who she is. Findings should be released within a year or two."

* * *

"Mr. Daley, you _must_ allow me to repay you!" Kiya exclaimed as she followed Larry Daley down the steps of the museum.

Keith had long left on an errand for his friends in Egypt: souvenir shopping, to which he had invited Kiya, but he understood her need to stay in the museum. Mr. Daley had come around about an hour before closing time, and she had begun to pester him fifteen minutes before.

"No, Kiya," said Larry, for what he hoped was the last time. Sure, he didn't earn as much as he hoped protecting the museum and its inhabitants, but the cab driver had been an old friend and he had only paid half the price for her ride this morning. But it was all right; it was easy to digress with kids. He did it all the time with Nick. "And I wish you'd call me Larry instead of Mr. Daley."

"Wouldn't that make you uncomfortable?" asked Kiya, accidentally stomping a foot as they reached the ground floor. "You were, after all, a former employer..."

"And now we're friends," said Larry, shaking his head and widening his eyes for emphasis. Kiya realized he had a habit of doing that; not that it irritated her in any way. It was quite humorous. "Besides, I'm not _that_ much older than you."

"But Mr. Daley–"

"Come on, you call Rebecca by her first name. Do you really think I'm that old?"

"..."

"Kiya!"

"All right, all right," said Kiya, smiling slightly. Ahkmenrah had pointed out the night before that whenever Mr. Daley–Larry, rather–was in a panic, his voice took a certain comedic pitch. Hearing it for herself now, she couldn't help but laugh. All those years of being trapped in his wrappings must have taught him how to perceive with the rest of his senses. "I will...call you Larry. Even though it's...it feels odd."

Larry raised an eyebrow. "Are you saying my name's weird?"

Kiya's eyes widened. "No, of course not! As I explained earlier–"

Larry was laughing and waving his hand dismissively. "Come on, Kiya, I was just kidding!" And then his lips became a straight line. "But seriously, call me Larry."

"All right, Mr. Da...er...Larry. By the way, is Nick coming tonight?"

"Nah," said the night guard, locking the back door for the time being. He'd just escort Kiya when the time came for her to leave. He was planning to establish a curfew for her and Nick, even during the weekends. Last night's semi-fiasco was not on his to-experience-again list. "He's going out with his friends tonight."

That made Kiya stop. It was a Saturday night...it was natural for someone Nick's age to be out that night with his friends. Horem and Annie, she remembered suddenly, were going to that party Gavin was hosting tonight. No doubt Annie would call some time later to try to convince her to join them again, but Kiya resolved not to buckle under her pleas. Besides, she would be with her own friends tonight – the museum inhabitants. They were part of her list of friends, now, or at least, some of them were. Sacagawea was especially friendly, though Columbus on fire had rudely interrupted their conversation before.

"Anyway," Larry cleared his throat, tossing his keys around. "I'm going to go lock up those Mayans. The sun's about to set – are you coming?"

"I was thinking...I want to watch a museum display come to life."

"How about Ahkmenrah's?"

Kiya was still for a moment. "I'm...I don't want to see him come to life. Not tonight." She was afraid of seeing him as he was in the day. Was it a quick process, or a slow, filling in of the muscles and the veins, then the skin, like the fictional Imhotep from The Mummy? She didn't want to find out.

"Okay," Larry shrugged. "I suggest the ornithology section, then. I think you'll find it inspiring, if Atilla doesn't come through the hall screaming something only Ahkmenrah can understand."

The thought of Atilla made Kiya shudder. "All right, um, Larry. Thank you for the suggestion."

"No problem," said the night guard, and they went their separate ways.

As soon as the sun set, Kiya imagined that the warmth that passed her and spread all throughout the museum was the breath of God, or at least what she had seen in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. She couldn't ever have imagined that their coming to life would have looked or felt at all like what she saw: it was just...life. The birds were made of wax or fake feathers and some were even sculptures, but when the night came, their faces were filled with color and she could almost feel the power, the life – there was nothing else she could describe it as – that pulsed through their bodies. Their wings began to flap, there was a certain shine in their eyes, and their beaks began to move. Kiya had braced herself for a sudden eruption of ear-splitting squawking, but there was nothing like the sort when they came to life.

There was a high-pitched whistling at first, the kind she had heard in the early mornings in Italy, the kind with the melody that made her believe that birds were more than just the foolish animals people had so cruelly made them out to be. The first melody was an invitation – _join me, let us live – and quickly another bird replied with its own distinct voice. There were some squawks that weren't too pleasing to the ears, but they were dignified all the same, and the order, the harmony in which they came to life and declared that they had something so precious, even if it would only last a night, was as awe-inspiring as Larry had described._

When they were finally all awake, some of them began to approach her in curiosity. The ostrich already knew her, squawking at her familiarly as it passed and left for its friends outside the ornithology section, but the others poked at her with their beak as if just to see if she would yelp. And she did, the first few times, until all the birds seemed to be in a line to poke the human and make it yelp and Kiya decided that she was not going to suffer the morbid curiosity of these winged creatures, no matter how beautiful their awakening.

Kiya almost tripped on a tiny race car as she batted the last of the persistent birds away, but caught herself against the wall. She looked around, hoping to find whoever was holding the remote so she could give them a cold glare, but remembered that–

"Well, well, if ain't big ol' miss bittersweet. Finally back after hidin' in shame for so long, huh?"

–Jedediah and Octavius were fond of cruising around the museum in their little remote-controlled cars, which seemed to become real, functional vehicles in the night. Kiya narrowed her eyes at the car and squatted down before it. She had expected to glare at Jedediah, but in truth he was so small she couldn't see the details of his face without leaning closer.

"What do I have to be ashamed of?" she asked indignantly, and huffed. "I _was_ here last night. Your eyes are just so small that you weren't able to spot me among the crowd of giants."

Jedediah's face scrunched up as he got out and slammed the door. She could see Octavius attempt to stop him to no avail. "I resent that!" he yelled, shaking his fist at her. "If my pistols just worked I'd have already..."

Octavius sighed and followed Jedediah out of the car. He approached Kiya calmly and sighed. "Milady," he said, bowing, "your sensitivity would be much appreciated. We may be small, but we have big hearts!"

There was such conviction and earnest in the Roman's eyes that Kiya couldn't help but feel a little guilty. "All right. I'm sorry," she said, turning to Jedediah. She did feel a little silly fighting with a man no taller than her knees. "Please forgive me."

Jedediah kept his arms crossed with his back turned to her, until he got back into the car and told Octavius to follow. Octavius attempted to persuade him to relent, but the Old West character was adamant and the old Roman general was left to shrug at Kiya helplessly. They drove away with such haste that had their car been a bit larger, she would have had to cough through the smoke their trail created.

There was that guilt again. Kiya didn't like the feeling and liked to avoid it as much as possible; she was able to shake it off for the time being. The museum was fully awake now; the music was blasting through the speakers, and was that that infernal monkey chattering away on the PA? In any case, it was time to see Ahkmenrah, who was no doubt fully dressed already.

Kiya was nervous as she stood before the elevator Ahkmenrah had studied in the night before. She had acted so childishly...she hoped his perception of her hadn't changed for the worse. Inhaling sharply, she pressed the down button.

No eyes, no pschent, no curly hair. No Ahkmenrah.

Kiya let out the breath she had been holding in and sighed. She had gotten excited for nothing. Where could he be _tonight_? She wished he would stay in one spot. It was so hard to find him, and she didn't want to walk into mammoths mating again in the process of finding him.

Half an hour later, he was not in any of the second floor sections (or in the bathroom). She went downstairs and cursed her stupidity as soon as she saw Columbus on his way out of his display room. Columbus would know where the Pharaoh was. He was supposed to know where everybody was, with that map of his! Some part in Kiya's head said this logic wasn't really like logic at all, but she ignored it and went forward to speak with him anyway,

"Hello," she said. Kiya found herself much more open to engaging the museum inhabitants in conversation than actual people, but found herself comfortable with it.

Columbus looked up and pointed to himself, his copper eyebrows shooting up in surprise.

Kiya nodded. "Yes. You're Columbus, aren't you?"

Columbus beamed at this and said something joyfully in Italian.

"Um...yes." She wondered if Ahkmenrah could speak Italian, too. It was too bad he wasn't here to translate and help look for himself. "Have you seen Ahkmenrah, by the way?"

Columbus paused for a second before he said things in his native language again.

Kiya stared at him and wondered if this was how foolish her classmates felt when they stared at Professor Goedet blankly. When Columbus was finished speaking, she smiled a little too widely to be normal and nodded. "Oh. Thank you, Columbus."

As he watched the real human run off, Columbus rolled his eyes. Oh, yes, no one had ever done _that _to him before, pretend they understood him and do the opposite of what he instructed. He glanced over to his far right, into the room where his pedestal stood. On the farthest window ledge was the boy dressed in gold, his crown on the ground beside his feet. The Pharaoh looked out the window longingly, up to the bright, yellow moon that bound him to the museum. Of course, Columbus was aware that they could step out of the museum for as long as the night lasted and still live, but there had never really been a reason to stray. Ever since the boy King was released they had become good friends, and Columbus knew that though the Pharaoh missed his palace and what he could remember from his old life, Ahkmenrah was content to live with Larry, Nick, and the others. When that young girl began to speak with him in the day, however... It seemed to strike a chord with the boy, and when he was not busying himself with his studies on the outside world, he asked to stay in Columbus's display room, where the view of the moon was the clearest and the silence gave him enough room to contemplate on the half-life he led in the night.

Columbus wished he could understand the need that Ahkmenrah had shared with him these past few nights, that need to live. The wondrous power of the tablet granted him all the memories of the real Columbus, despite also granting the knowledge that he was only an imitation, but even when he knew the trials and glories of human life he did not desire to have such an existence. Perhaps that was the difference between him and Ahkmenrah: the boy King wanted to _return_ to his life, whereas despite his vivid 'memories', he had still to _start_ a life. He was not inspired enough by his memories to long for such a thing, however, and was happy to know that his endeavors in the past had contributed greatly to the new world. Perhaps he could understand real humans and their lives one day, but for now, he would leave the living to those truly living.

Kiya was not as contemplative as Columbus or Ahkmenrah that night; she was frustrated and decided that if she was meant to find Ahkmenrah tonight, he would come to her. It wasn't normal for her to leave things to fate, believing in siezing the day (when she felt like it, usually with her schoolwork, but evidently hardly ever with people), but she was tired and where in the world were Larry, Teddy, and Sacagawea? It wasn't really as if she could have conversation with anyone else; if she could, then they were too busy giving her odd looks to approach her, though she was thankful Atilla only spared her a narrowing of the eyes before running off with his Hun posse.

As she traipsed around the museum with a dejected sigh, she spotted a civil war man and a character in a Polynesian tiki mask battling it out in a game of chess. Approaching them with a crouch, Kiya saw that the civil war man was losing, despite supposedly being more advanced. When the undergraduate student failed to hold in a snicker, the civil war man shot her a glare.

"Sorry," she said, realizing she was apologising much more than usual. "You are Saim?"

The civil war man shook his head at her, and the character in the mask waved a hand in his clothed face to get him to make a move.

Kiya surveyed the chess board with a calculating purse of the lips. She wasn't a master player, and Horem was a much better tactical strategist, _fine_, but she knew the game well enough to know which piece the civil war man was supposed to move next. "Perhaps," she said, "moving the knight over there" –she pointed to a spot that would set it up for destroying a bishop– "would be best."

The civil war man glared again.

Kiya stood and took a step back, her hands up in the air like a criminal caught in the act. "All right," she said. She knew when she wasn't wanted. The looks Horem gave her when he wanted some alone time with Annie and even the awkward moments she shared with Annie when the girl wanted alone time with her brother made sure of this. Resolving to find Larry (because Teddy and Sacagawea might want 'alone time' with each other and she didn't feel like feeling unwanted again, at least for tonight), she started for the oceanology section of the museum.

Green eyes. Pschent. Curly hair – and stomach. Ahkmenrah.

"Ahkmen–!" she cried out before clamping a hand over her own mouth. Was she a fool or was she a _fool_? She was like a giddy schoolgirl the way she had just acted, and now he probably thought she was one of those stupid, loud girls who yelled about everything just to grab the attention of the boys they–

"Kiya," said Ahkmenrah, interrupting her self-deprecating train of thought. He was suddenly beside her, that contagious smile on his lips. "Columbus mentioned that you were asking for me."

"I...I wasn't asking for you, I was just..." Kiya felt dizzy. The disappointment in failing to find him and then the – euphoria? – in seeing him now was overwhelming. She felt a warmth on her hand and looked down to find Ahkmenrah's own, holding her arm up by the fingers.

"Are you all right?"

"Oh, yes, yes," said Kiya, clearing her throat and standing straight. She didn't want him to think of her as some distressed damsel in need of saving. Or a giddy schoolgirl. She was an independent scholar. So why did her hand tremble as she released him? "I'm sorry, Ahkmenrah. About last night... I lacked sleep the night before and took it out on you and Larry. It won't happen again. I hope I didn't do anything too embarrassing..."

Ahkmenrah's eyes were wide. He seemed frozen as he stared at her, but before Kiya could ask him what was going on, his eyes narrowed and his lips spread out into a grin. "You...might have done something a lady would be ashamed of, but...I won't speak of it with anyone."

"What did I do last night?" Kiya gasped, uncharacteristically frantic as she grabbed Ahkmenrah by the shoulders and shook him. If she had done anything to ruin his good opinion of her, her life would be in shambles!

Ahkmenrah burst into such hearty laughter that he clutched his bare stomach in pain.

Kiya's jaw fell. She couldn't tell if he was joking or laughing because of the memory of that embarrassing thing she had done. She hadn't ever seen Ahkmenrah like this. It wasn't a bad thing; he was still a man, no matter how kingly he was. "Well...was there?"

Ahkmenrah calmed down after a bit more chuckling. He straightened himself out when he was done, and cleared his throat almost shamefully. "I'm sorry," he said, smiling. "You did nothing embarrassing, Kiya. I was only joking."

Kiya crossed her arms, unable to keep herself from grinning. This was bad. She had to control her lips, or he'd think that doing this all the time was all right, the way Horem did with Annie. Of course, when Ahkmenrah did it, she didn't actually mind, but it was the concept of it, and...oh, she didn't care. "You know," said Kiya, "I never knew you had this side to you. I wonder if you ever showed this in the palace."

"Of course I didn't," answered the boy King, thoughtfully. "From what I can remember, I only ever showed it to my closest friend. And my mother, I suppose..."

"Oh." Kiya was extremely tempted to ask more about his closest friend, but speaking of his mother seemed to dampen his spirits. She started for the museum's back door, forgetting that Larry had locked it, and looked back every so often to make sure Ahkmenrah was following. When the Pharaoh realized her intentions, he stopped in his tracks and pulled her back by the arm.

"Ahkmenrah...?" Kiya maneuvered her way out of his grip and took his arm instead. "It's more quiet in the back."

"Perhaps we shouldn't go there," said Ahkmenrah, who did nothing about her hand on his arm but look at it: smaller, so much younger than his yet with such a powerful hold on him.

"Why not?"

The Pharaoh pretended to look contemplative. "It has...something to do with falling asleep in the middle of a conversation, but for the sake of preserving your unwavering loyalty, I...won't say a thing."

Kiya scoffed, partly in amusement and partly to hide how jittery her hands had become. "Are you..." she covered her mouth with her fist to stop her lips from widening. Any further and they'd have ripped. "Are you being sassy with me, Ahkmenrah?"

Ahkmenrah looked down at her, shyly and yet the slight red that painted her high cheekbones boosted his confidence. He held her gaze, unaware of the new shine in his eyes. "A little."

There was a short staring contest between the two, Kiya looking on with pretend annoyance and Ahkmenrah with shy mischief, before they broke and chuckled like old friends. Kiya certainly felt like they were old friends.

They went to sit against a wall before the oceanology department, one of the less frequented areas of the museum, with Kiya hugging her knees and Ahkmenrah in his usual cross legged position.

"Ahkmenrah," Kiya started, looking up at him, "tell me about your life in Egypt."

Ahkmenrah blinked. "What about my life in Egypt?"

"Anything. Like, say, your father. What was your father like?"

"He was..." The look in Ahkmenrah's eyes was almost as distant as when they had spoken of Kahmunrah. "He was kind enough. Tell me about your life, Kiya."

Kiya sighed. "What about my life? I'm pretty sure there's nothing interesting about my life compared to yours."

Ahkmenrah had her chin between his index finger and thumb again. It reminded her of one of her dreams, when that man had threatened the girl with a stern voice and a tight grip, but his was nothing like that. She didn't know it, but it was a gentle hold, asking for permission to go on; to keep her. "I highly doubt that."

They held each other's gazes not unlike their little contest before, but it turned awkward quickly. The intensity in their eyes reminded them too much of their first meeting, and if they had earned in each other a closeness enough to have a repeat of it, they were still too modest to admit it. Ahkmenrah dropped his hand and spoke to rid himself of the impulses running amok in his mind. "Although Larry and Nick are educating me about life outside, I know...I know it is nothing like the life you live. Everything in your life is interesting, Kiya. I would love to hear more about it." Before Kiya could deny it, he continued, adding a humorous tone, "And I will remind you that you promised to introduce me to your grandparents. I have your grandfather to thank for finding my tomb, after all."

"He was ten when he found your tomb," Kiya laughed. "His father had taken him out to the Valley of the Kings, and he stumbled upon it."

"Like destiny?" Not even Ahkmenrah knew why there was a hopeful gleam in his eyes.

"I...guess," Kiya shrugged. What did she know about destiny? "Anyway, did I really promise that I'd introduce you to my grandparents? Wasn't it just a suggestion? I don't think Larry would be pleased to find out..."

"Oh, you promised," said Ahkmenrah, nodding convincingly. "You promised and I hope you plan to honor your word."

"Well, when you put it that way..." Kiya couldn't believe she was actually trying to think of a way to spend the night with him outside the museum. Larry would kill her. "If you really want to, then one day I'll find a way to smuggle you out of the museum."

"Hmm. There is still the matter of getting past Larry Daley."

"Don't worry," said Kiya, smugly. "I think it'll be easy to steal you away. I am going to be an archaeologist, after all."

"How does that connect to stealing me away?" Ahkmenrah asked with an amused smirk. She thought so differently from Larry, Nick, or Teddy or Sacagawea or Columbus. Or Atilla (of course). It was so familiar, and he wondered again if they had met somewhere before – perhaps they had been in Cambridge at the same time? – but that was over fifty years ago, and Kiya had chosen New York over Cambridge for the sake of her grandparents. It had nagged at him since the night they kissed, but she had given him only a look of sheer incredulity the last time he'd asked, and he didn't want to risk receiving such a thing from her again.

"Trust me," she said, but she was having too much fun to remember that he had said the same thing during their first meeting. "There is a series of movies about a great man with the greatest archaeological exploits known to the new world, you see..."

Movies were categorized under fiction, he remembered learning from Larry, though Larry had gone on to say that the tablet bringing to life all the museum's inhabitants was practically fiction in itself, and that anything was possible to him now. Ahkmenrah allowed Kiya to continue. "A great archaeologist?"

"Oh, yes. His name is Indiana Jones..."

* * *

_Tablets filled the girl's room to the brim. She could barely breathe, but this wasn't the first time it had happened. Her father had a habit of delegating his work to her, to keep her mind sharp, he said (and to keep her under his control, she thought), though life was so dull these days that she welcomed the task. _

_"Amunet!" a shrill voice cried as its owner slid into her room. Kesi, one of the girls who waited on her, and her best friend. She almost crashed into the tablets, but Kesi was innately lithe and graceful on her feet, so she caught herself and ended with a pose that would have enticed her lover. Amunet remembered that his name was Sadiki._

_Amunet's eyes traveled from the tablet in her hand to the papyrus in Kesi's. Her heart leapt at the thought. It felt like it would explode at any moment. "Kesi...? Is that...?"_

_"Yes!" said Kesi, her voice still high-pitched. She gripped the papyrus so tightly that Amunet held her hands out to it, afraid that it might fall to dust before she was able to read its contents. "He replied. He _actually _replied to that convoluted letter of yours!"_

_"It wasn't convoluted in the least," said Amunet, indignantly. "I only delved into the country's social and economical problems in great detail. I must impress him with my mind, Kesi, for it is all he will know of me until..."_

_"Until...?" Kesi stared at her with a hand to her hip. "Where do you plan to take this, Amunet? You know your father would sooner kill you than have you near him. If he learns that you've met him, he'll kill us both."_

_"Then he won't learn of it," Amunet sighed. She knew the reasons for her father's hatred, but she didn't understand any of it. He was kind, generous, handsome, and soon the content of his reply would assure her that he was brilliant. "May I see the letter, Kesi?"_

_Kesi nodded and handed Amunet the papyrus scroll. She...couldn't see the contents of the letter. It was a blur, but she knew its meaning. He was amazed by her deep knowledge of their country's current situation. Just by her first letter he had gained a deeper understanding of it, and he hoped to discuss more with her over the course of time. There was the matter, though, of her identity._

_He wanted to know her._

_Amunet's heart swelled with excitement._

Kiya's eyes snapped open. She could almost feel the girl's heart in her own. The girl...Amunet. So she had a name. The papyrus scrolls, the tablets – she was Egyptian. Ancient Egyptian. Obviously. What was this? A fantasy? There was no known Amunet in Ancient Egyptian history, save for the minor goddess, but clearly this girl's joys and trials were human. There had to be more to these dreams than just a revelation of her subconscious.

Kiya had to learn more about Amunet.

* * *

How bad was it? :(

Wow, haha, I have a lot of reviews to reply to, but I'm going to reply to each and every one of the reviews I've received since I posted Chapter 6 more than a year ago! So here goes! :))

**bean15**: Hey! It's been a long time, but I'm glad this chapter made that one week of yours kinda better. XD Shaila will be in the next chapter again, if you don't mind ;D Hope I portrayed Shaila and Naveen the way you wanted them portrayed!

**Dawnmist 11**: I'd say Ahkmenrah was jealous of the thought of a date, yes. After all, Kiya's kind of the only girl he knows, so it's weird to have to share her with someone he's never seen. Or someone he thinks he's never seen... Hahaha! Thanks for reviewing!

**NiminariAmriath**: Yep, right idea! Keep going :))

M**iss Courageous Hufflepuff**: Thanks for reviewing! I was afraid of doing the one word sentence thing for the reasons you stated, but I'm glad it worked for you. I wouldn't say it was a stalker-like quality, more of a watching-out-for-his-friend worriedly thing, but maybe I'm just in denial, hahaha! It's good you got the lack of finality with her friends, I was hoping the readers would. I doubt they'd get me as a writer, but thanks for the vote of confidence anyway, hahaha! And thank you so much for reviewing!

**Me Myself and I and Us and**: Hahaha! I love your theories. I never thought of it that way, but that is what it seems like, doesn't it? Your theory's possible, but Ramy and Keith aren't related. :D

**Raine44354**: Hahaha! I agree. =)) Thanks for reviewing!

**chagrin lullaby**: Thanks for the review and the huzzah! :))

**Elven Heart993**: YOU NOTICED IT! The "Until there came a day when-"! Hahaha I didn't think anyone would. One day you will discover what he was about to say! Although it's not going to come from him. I think. Heheheh. I'll try to make Kahmunrah as close to his funny self as possible, but obviously since my fic isn't as purely comedic as the movies, Kahmunrah will have a more serious side, too. If there IS a third movie, I hope they put more Rami Malek in! :)) Thanks for reviewing! And I'm glad you like my portrayal of Kesi and Sadiki!

**QueenFreakiGeeki**: Thanks! :) By Kira, do you mean Kiya? If yes then no, they are not blood related :)

**Prince Joker**: Thanks for the crit, I appreciate your honesty! :) I understand what you mean when you say you'll probably stop reading if the character you like is out of character, so I won't take it personally, haha! I'm pretty sure there are lots of Kahmunrah fics out there now, though, so...yeah. Hahaha! Thanks for reviewing! :) Although it'll be a while before I can actually introduce him :/

**Ms. Katherine Jolie**: Yay theories! There are two faceless men in Kiya's dreams, and nope, Annie isn't Kesi's future reincarnation. Just a hint, haha! Thanks for reviewing!

**fancyfarmer**: Thanks for reviewing! I'm glad you find the story interesting :)

**AnimeChick365**: I'm honored to hear that TMP's inspired you to write your own Ahkmenrah story! We need more Ahkmenrah stories out there! :)) I hope you get all your stories done the way I hope to finish TMP, haha! And thank you for reviewing!

**Rhio-bob**: Thanks, I'm glad you like the story! Especially the characters :)

**Petite Moineau**: Thanks for reviewing! More interactions with Ahkmenrah in the next chapter! :)) And to answer your question in another review, I suppose that was part of why he kissed her, but there was another reason (not instant love for her). I agree that it sucks how they didn't even explain Rebecca's disappearance :/ I hope to properly explain that in the story, and YES why isn't Ahkmenrah in the second movie more, especially when the main villain is his brother? :/

**vds3000**: Thanks! :)

**ShiningGalaxy**: Kiya IS very stubborn :)) She likes to be right whenever she has the chance. Haha, thanks for reviewing!

**Heaven's Archer**: And you can STILL be super crazy awesome by reviewing on this chapter! :)) I'm actually busy in college these days but I don't care, I want to update The Missing Piece despite all the work! :)) Thanks for reviewing! I really appreciate it.

**writtensofine67**: Thanks for the HUZZAH and the review! :))

**Sir Stud Muffin**: My cameo was the student that said, "Well, that was insanely anti-climactic." I was going through a stage where I added insanely with everything, even in the Author's Notes at the top and the bottom, so that was the clue. Hahaha! I love writing the dreams Kiya has, too! Hahaha what do you think is actually going on? Try guessing, you might actually get it right! Some theories in the reviews have gotten some things right already ;D Thanks for reviewing!

**-OCD-Obsessed Cullen Disorder-**: Thank you! :)

**Stebba stud28**: Quite possibly ;D Hahaha you're right! All you have to do to find out is to keep on reading! And thanks for reviewing! :)

**pinkxjellybean**: Isn't he? I'm starting to fall in love with him, though, hahaha! He needs to stop being so creepily suave and knowledgable in things Kiya related. But yes, Ahkmenrah IS much cooler! Nobody can beat Ahkmenrah, hahaha!

**spicea11347**: WOOO foreshadowing and suspense! :)) What's your idea? I'd love to hear it :) Sorry the update took so long, thanks for reviewing!

**rainbowclownzombies**: I assure you there will be more talk of Kahmunrah in the future :) Thanks for reviewing!

**Bloody Midnight**: Thank you! :D

**DG36**: Thanks for reviewing! :D The first part was the hardest to write, so I'm glad to hear it!

**Murasaki KuroNeko Rei**: His name is really Keith, but that doesn't mean that's all he is ;D Thanks for reviewing!

**TTCyclone**: Glad you like it, thanks for reviewing! :) I hope I've kept them in character so far :D

**Karrua**: Thank youuu for the compliment! :) And thanks for reviewing, it was that final push that got me to start again. :)

Phew! That took a while, haha, not that I don't love all your reviews! Keep 'em theories comin'! I'll edit the chapter later on when I wake up tomorrow morning (it's so late here, I wonder if I can still wake up for school tomorrow hahaha!).

A thousand thank you's to everyone who reviewed! I needn't repeat that you lot are superbly fantastic and marvelously amazing! ...Oops. Haha yes this is a copy paste from the previous chapter. Again. I think? SHH.

If anything needs to be explained or if you'd just like to comment comment comment (!), just state it in a review or PM me and I'll gladly answer it.

Thanks also goes to everyone who put this story in their alert lists and their favorite story lists! Feel free to drop by any tiiiime. (Or make your presence known through anything other than an alert or a hit in the Story Traffic. You'd be more super crazy awesome that way.)

See you again soon, and I'm glad to be back! I missed this and you guys so much!

J-W


	8. Chapter 8

**S****ummary: Post Night at the Museum; begins before the second movie. Unluckily assigned to write a research paper on the public's level of interest in Egyptology, Kiya must visit the Museum of Natural History every day for two weeks and stay by Ahkmenrah's coffin. It is a boring task, but when she takes to talking to the still Pharaoh, life begins to get just a little more interesting. And interesting isn't even the half of it.**

**Disclaimer**: All the characters in the movie and its universe belong to...well, the people who made the movie! The only characters I own are Kiya, her friends, and her family. Well, most of them. Shaila O'Connor and Naveen Sitaram belong to **bean15**, while Kesi and Sadiki belong to **Elven Heart993**. Please don't use them without permission.

So at this point I'm wondering if I still have any readers, and I totally understand if you've gone. :( I've been away for so long with no excuses except that I've been getting into a lot of different fandoms and sometimes I just don't have the inspiration to write. Which makes me a bad writer, because good writers are supposed to keep on even without inspiration. So yeah. But here's the next chapter!

Unfortunately, no living Ahkmenrah in this one, but I assure you that in the next chapter he will be there. In a good way. (How can him being there ever be bad though, right?) And so will Larry, Nick, and Rebecca! I really miss having the real movie characters around, it's just I have to move the story along. I hope you like the OCs though! Please tell me what you think about them.

**PLEASE READ**. It's to understand the story, especially starting from here. For this NatM universe, please erase the names of all the Pharaohs you currently know. The general back story I got for Ahkmenrah is mostly based on theories about Tutankhamun, as well as for others who may share the same name as other Egyptian royalty. But in this universe, there is no Tutankhamun, Akhenaten, etc. Ahkmenrah is the boy King, but he died, say, a few years before he turned thirty. Say boy because the others still got to rule till they were old. You will be seeing names that parallel those of real Egyptian royalty, but they have nothing to do with them and what you currently know about them. If you're confused about that just PM me because...I know that explanation was confusing :))

* * *

**Chapter 8**

Kiya woke and finished her Sunday duties early the next morning. Just as quickly, she returned to her residence hall, still feeling awkward as she greeted the same guard who had seen her with Shaila the night before, and rushed to her room to avoid any more witnesses to her spectacle two nights previous.

Unfortunately, last night's events had prevented her from finishing the assignments still waiting on her plate, the same papers she'd assured Annie she could finish before that same Sunday. It was a task to convince one's growling stomach that lunch was overrated, but Kiya managed it and worked without more than a five-minute respite. Typing, editing, and stuffing herself with water, cookies Mama Kiya had sent her home with the other night, and grapes (even though they were sent by Horem when he discovered that her fridge was empty), she finished at around five in the afternoon.

Kiya debated whether she should drop by the museum or not, but decided it was too late. She could just ask Rebecca to access the list of tours taken when she returned. It would shake the data a little, since tours didn't include families who chose to roam the museum by themselves, but Professor Goedet would never discover it...and she preferred going to the museum when she had friends to talk with. In any case, the average number of people remained much the same.

When her papers were neatly stacked and divided among their respective subjects, Kiya took upon herself a new quest–dinner. Ha! The word quest was such a fanciful word; telling Ahkmenrah about Indiana Jones had allowed her to walk down the proverbial lane of her own memories, bringing her into such an _adventurous _state of mind, though explaining the movies in detail were somewhat difficult.

There were several concepts the Pharaoh could understand only after going into much detail of the world's cultural history, fictional or not, and it ended with Ahkmenrah requesting for a DVD, a word he'd learned from Nick. Having passed them in his rounds during the discussion, Larry said he might procure one.

'Anyway,' he'd added, 'it's about time we had a Movie Night around here.'

Just as Kiya closed the door behind her on her way out, the constant, almost perfunctory heavy plodding of boots on the hallway carpet ceased. When she turned her head for a glance, it came to her that she should put her lips together for a smile.

"Oh, it's you," said the owner of the boots and the oily scent of Chinese take-away. It was her! The kind upperclassman who'd lent her the dress for dinner with Keith. It shamed Kiya to realize that she didn't even know her name.

"Hello," said Kiya, smiling with obvious embarrassment. "I've...had your dress washed. I should be able to return it within the week."

"It's no problem," said the older girl, returning her grin. Kiya smiled a little wider, but it became uncomfortable fairly quickly. Suddenly, Kiya feared for the girl. Was social ineptitude contagious?

"I'm very sorry," Kiya muttered, then cleared her throat and made her voice louder. She had always found upperclassmen rather intimidating; she'd just hidden it with an indifferent gaze and a straight face. Being confronted with kindness was much more difficult than being stared down, however. "But I'd rudely forgotten to ask your name all those days ago."

"Shaila," she grinned, as though she'd been waiting for Kiya to ask. Friendly people had a way of making her feel foolish. "Shaila O'Connor."

Kiya repeated the name under her breath. Why did it sound so familiar...?

"Shaila O'Connor!" Kiya exclaimed. "You helped me two nights ago. The guard told me..." Could it even be called a coincidence, that she'd helped her twice in a week? "Thank you. I'm sorry I inconvenienced you."

"Hey, stop groveling," Shaila quipped. "It's all good, all right? I have a lot of experience with drunk friends. And now friends with food poisoning, but that's another thing."

"Friends," Kiya dwelled on the word between them before shaking her head. "Oh, I wasn't drunk," and repeated it when Shaila put on a doubtful expression, but gave up the third time. "Just...thank you. And your lover, too."

"My...lover," Shaila said, as if trying to remember what that meant. "Oh, Naveen," she laughed.

"Yes," said Kiya, and subconsciously eyed the steamy plastic bags in Shaila's right hand. Kiya didn't know why, but Shaila had a way of making her let her guard down completely. Only around Ahkmenrah did she ever feel that way. Without thinking, she asked, "What's that you're carrying?"

Shaila knew that tone. "Chinese." Lifting the boxes to her nose, she pretended to take a good whiff before grinning. "Want some? And I've always got chocolate ice cream in the freezer. Just in case."

"Yes. Yes. I mean, no, thank you," Kiya swatted the air around her as though a mosquito had taken her manners away. While she _was_ extremely hungry, she already owed Shaila enough, didn't she? "I'd prefer not to live on your charity."

Shaila put on a thoughtful expression. "My boyfriend did say I should start signing up for missions soon. But I _could_ work on you instead," she laughed, motioning for Kiya to take her keys from her left-side pocket. Shaila wasn't sure why, but the awkward, bronze-skinned girl was so easy to get along with. "Come on in."

Shaila's room was neatly arranged, not a sock out of place in her drawer. Colored post-its sat color-coordinated on her desk while various pieces of needlework and cross stitch decorated her walls. Kiya hadn't the time to look around before, but she liked it.

It was astounding how one dinner could change the dynamics between two people. Over the course of the two hours which included Chinese take-away and that chocolate ice cream she'd been promised, Kiya discovered that the reason Shaila O'Connor found it so easy to deal with her was because she was a stage manager in the university theatre. Her upperclassman had worked with all sorts of actors, directors, production crews, and while she insisted that her amiability came from experience, Kiya had a feeling that she was simply born with that easygoing personality.

Sometimes she wished she could be as spontaneous as Shaila, whose jokes were never out of place. She possessed an uncanny dislike of nuts and tomatoes yet loved peanut butter and spaghetti sauce, but was otherwise agreeable, and was clearly in love with her partner, Naveen, though she showed it differently than Annie and Horem, whose displays of affection only ever made her feel nauseous, but Kiya presumed it had something to do with having shared a womb with Horem.

Hearing how Shaila spoke of Naveen made her actually wonder what it might be like to share a special relationship with someone. It was said that love swept people off their feet, came at the most unexpected moments, but Kiya liked to think she was more aware of her parallel-existing trains of thought than that.

And in any case, it couldn't just be anybody. She had sat through enough romantic movies with Annie to know that it was foolish to jump into a relationship simply for the sake of being in one. And it wasn't as if she possessed a whole shipload of choices the way Annie did...

While Shaila welcomed her to stay after dinner, the stacks of paper on her desk made it clear that she had much work to do. Running the risk of seeming like she'd only stayed for the food, Kiya genuinely enjoyed her company, and thanked her for it and her generosity before returning to her room.

As soon as she was curled up in her favorite position on her swivel chair before her desk, Kiya switched on her laptop and checked her mail. To her pleasant surprise, Ramy had replied.

**_Kiya,_**

**_More and more each day, I wish I could share details of the dig with you. Our head archaeologist has forbidden it, however, for obvious reasons, until we finish up and officially release the findings. She is strict, but a brilliant woman _**_–_**_ I'm sure you'd agree if you were here with me._**

**_From what I've experienced here, I can already tell you'll love it. Tedious, yes, and it will never even be a quarter as exciting as five minutes of an Indiana Jones movie, but it's enjoyable nonetheless._**

Kiya couldn't help but laugh. She and Ramy had discovered their guilty pleasure of the movie series long ago.

**_Still, though each day provides a new lesson, I wish i could visit New York and try that frrrozen hot chocolate with you._**

**_About Professor Goedet: in his short stint at Cambridge, he was known for his odd assignments. But we both know that the man is wise beyond his years, don't we? Haha. I'm touched you think of me as a role model, but I'm only a poor student trying to survive!_**

**_I'm glad you're doing well in school; that's always important. We're leaving the site in a few days, and then I'll finally be able to respond more frequently. But enough about me; I'm certain your assignment has progressed well. I see you as the type to perform excellently in school._**

**_Time for the last few checks on the site, have to go. You know I look forward to hearing from you again._**

**_Yours always,_**

**_Ramy_**

Ramy really was one of the most thoughtful people she knew. It was too bad she lacked the funds to visit Kiya – Ramy hadn't the rich grandparents she did and couldn't go places on a whim. Wishful thinking was hardly harmful, though…

If only Ramy really could afford to visit her in New York, then she wouldn't have to keep intruding in Horem and Annie's relationship. She understood that Horem wanted some 'alone time' with his girlfriend; it just hurt to hear him say it. Perhaps it was a good thing that she'd met Shaila, and Ramy, and those at the museum.

**_Ramy,_**

**_I really do understand why you can't tell me about the dig. Don't worry about it. If you say the head of your dig is brilliant, then I hope to meet her one day, just as I hope to meet you. And while Indiana Jones is quite enviable, I don't think I could live with looking over my shoulder for danger so often. How you describe archaeology now seems ideal to me. In any case, nobody believes there are any more 'magical' artifacts to be found in this new age._**

Kiya sighed, tapping her fingers on the keyboard a bit. she didn't even need to leave New York city to find the magic she'd sought as a child, and regretted being unable to tell Ramy about Ahkmenrah and all the wonders his artifact had brought the natural history museum.

**_And you're right, of course _**_– _**_Professor Goedet is a great man. But you should know that part of the reason why you're exemplary yourself is because while you are struggling, you're also succeeding! I hope to be able to apply for and join digs as you have._**

**_It isn't of much note, but I went on the first date I've ever agreed to without the coercion or influence of my brother. Incidentally, my friend took me to Serendipity III and I was able to taste the frrrozen hot chocolate. It wasn't quite as frozen as I thought it might be, but it was delightfully sweet._**

**_Someday, when you're able to come to Manhattan, I'll share it with you. I know it'll be different with you because I don't think I get along with anyone quite as well as I do with you, Ramy._**

**_I still have schoolwork, so I'm signing off now. But I await your reply, as always!_**

**_Love,_**

**_Kiya_**

Pressing the Send button, Kiya sat back. She considered writing another email – she'd forgotten to tell Ramy about her dreams of the Amunet girl! whose name she remembered because she'd taken it down on her notebook. But Ramy was busy, she was certain, so it was probably best to bother her with only one thing at a time. It was the concept of 'dates' today; she supposed the dreams could wait.

* * *

"What is she doing out here?"

"Oh yeah, there was that whole drama about the sleeping, remember?"

A laugh. "Right, that must've been so embarrassing. I can understand why she doesn't wanna go in."

"Tell me about it! Total mistake enlisting for this class. Shoulda woken up earlier to get into..."

Kiya didn't mean to eavesdrop. The rest of her classes for the morning she'd participated in well enough, she having been motivated by Ramy's email and the resolve to be an Egyptologist burning brightly in her again, though Ahkmenrah might have had some influence over that, too. She just didn't understand why he'd be interested in the boring present when the past was where the treasures of history and culture lay.

She was pacing outside Professor Karim's classroom, going over, admittedly, her plans for what she was certain would be a humiliating next few hours.

"Yeah, I guess being the kid of famous people doesn't really make you archaeologist material."

"If you can't even stay awake in class, how do you keep up in digs, y'know?"

Kiya stared at the ones odd enough to speak of the last meeting as they passed her, but they didn't seem to notice or care and she still couldn't bring herself to step inside. Ten minutes to class–what would she say? Horem and Annie must already be inside; they were always early for Karim's Monday lectures, because Annie was a worrywart that way and Kiya and Horem gave into her whims like she usually did for them.

How to make a proper apology...? She'd never liked those things. But Horem did deserve one. Kiya just wished Annie didn't have to be there for it–the redhead had always been the kind of person she wanted to protect, and she didn't want to be seen in a moment of weakness.

All right, she was ready. Just one foot after the other–

"Miss Ganzouri, if you're deciding to cut class today, I am certain your more experienced classmates would agree that this is not the best place to do it."

Kiya froze.

"On that note," said her professor, "Did you get the proper amount of sleep last night?"

Contempt filled Kiya face from the downward shift of her eyebrows to the stiff corners of her lips, but Professor Karim only smirked. Recalling Professor Goedet's unfair but sound advice, Kiya smoothed her countenance into a collected one Horem might have been proud of. She wanted to say something, to retort, but those Latin Honours...

"Forgive me for falling asleep the other day, Professor," she said instead, and added, after digging her dignity a graveyard and mourning it profusely, "please. I won't do it again."

Karim stared at her for she didn't know how long. She resented his scrutiny. "See that you don't," he replied. "I can tell you've never done this before, so I'm willing to give you some advice–all you need for an apology is to mean it. Whoever you're fretting about will have no choice but to forgive you; otherwise they will look the fool."

Kiya blinked. Was Professor Karim actually trying to help her in some way instead of scorning her? Before she could process it, he flicked his wrist to check his watch and clicked his tongue. "Class is about to start. Shall we?"

He left her at the doorway. Something horrible must have happened, because he never looked upon her kindly. When the half-hour bell shook her from her reverie and prodded her into class, it was his quick lesson about apologies that rang in her mind, but the object of her worries was nowhere to be seen. Even Annie wasn't in – and they had a perfect record.

Disheartened at their disappearance when she'd felt so ready to give her 'sorry' speech, Kiya slumped into her seat. Oh, well, at least she could rehearse in her head a little longer. Pulling her notebook from her bag, she didn't even realize that she possessed the same optimism she envied in Ahkmenrah.

Horem and Annie were absent for the entire duration of Professor Karim's class, which gave her pause. Either something had happened or Horem and Annie hated her so much that they didn't even want to attend a class with her in it.

What a terrible thought. She really did like Annie, and Horem when he wasn't being so obnoxious. She was being silly. Of course she wasn't the reason they were gone.

All the worrying had made her thirsty. She was often thirsty for reciting in class, so Kiya knew all the water fountain hotspots in the building. Straight first and then past two hallway intersections, she ignored the odd looks from those passing as she looked at each and every one of them, searching for a familiar face that might know of her brother and his girlfriend's whereabouts.

After her drink, she decided that maybe they had been so hungry that they went to early lunch together. As far as she knew, there were no new stalls near their building, but she was so desperate by the time she reached the food stalls that when she saw the first familiar face, she approached him immediately, no matter their history.

"Gavin."

Gavin had just peacefully purchased hot dogs when he heard her voice. He'd liked Kiya back then, despite her quirks and extreme love of Ancient Egypt, but he was glad she showed her _nutso_ before he started getting serious. "Hey," he said, giving a short wave of a hot dog. "It's been a while. What's up?"

"I can't find Horem and Annie," Kiya admitted. She found she didn't despise him as much as she'd thought. While she resented his words before, a part of her had liked his other qualities. And Ahkmenrah wouldn't have judged him for simply saying that; he'd have persuaded him to change his views. "Have you seen them?"

Gavin's expression was that of disbelief. "Where have you _been_?"

"Excuse me?"

Gavin sighed almost irritably. Not necessarily at her, maybe a bit at her because why did she have to embarrass him in front of the entire restaurant like that, but he was over that and it was mostly because he didn't want to be reminded of what had happened two days before. Only he and Sitaram were spared from their floor – total disaster.

"You didn't hear? Some idiot brought expired food to my party. Annie and a lot of the guests got bad stomachaches, but Horem got real sick, so she's taking care of him, obviously. Man," he laughed wryly. "I knew you were detached; just didn't know how much.'

Kiya shot him a look that startled even him, who'd been on the receiving end of one of her fiercest glares once before in a flashbulb memory he'd never forget.

"Why didn't she tell me?" Kiya wondered out loud when she drew her eyes away from him, because now wasn't the time to get worked up about other people's opinions. She reached into her schoolbag for her cellphone, but it was neither in its usual place in the inner zipper at the back nor was it in the bag's other 'secret' pockets.

Seeing any of the Ganzouri twins flustered happened about once in a blue moon, so Gavin relished the moment until he remembered that he'd already seen Kiya this way, long ago when they'd gone on their first few dates, before she spread her Crazy wings. Sighing, he took his phone out of his pocket and held it out for her almost reluctantly. "...Here. Use it to call Annie."

Kiya stared at it and then accepted with a soft 'thank you' he hadn't expected. The silence between them as she waited for somebody to pick up was so thick that when Gavin heard a high-pitched voice answer on the other end, he gave an audible _phew_.

"Annie," Kiya gasped.

"Kiya!" Annie replied with similar relief. "Where have you been?"

* * *

Kiya had never cut classes in all her years as a university student, but she decided that Horem was a good enough reason to start. Apparently, his situation had gotten to the point where Annie wanted to take him to the hospital, but he'd insisted on going to their grandparents' instead. Annie was in the penthouse, too, fretting as she was wont to.

"It's lovely to see you again, dear," said Mama Kiya when her granddaughter arrived, embracing the girl. "If only it were under better circumstances."

Kiya dropped her bag at the foot of the kitchen counter. "How is he?"

"His fever just broke," said Annie, slowly emerging from the room Horem and Kiya shared whenever they slept over, which was rare nowadays. Her usually pink apple cheeks were wan and darker shades of flesh marred the supple skin under her eyes. She looked calm at first, gazing upon her friend, and then her lips trembled as she faltered towards Kiya.

She didn't know much about social cues when it came to others, but Annie had always been somewhat easy to read. Her friend needed a comforting embrace, and Kiya gave it with a tight squeeze. "I'm sorry you haven't been able to reach me," she said. "I can't seem to find my cellphone."

"It's fine," Annie said, smiling toothily as they pulled away, and suddenly it felt as though all their arguments the past few days had been erased, the seemingly impassable stretch between them almost nothing. It was neither Horem nor Annie's fault that they'd become this way; it was hers, for choosing to keep herself distant. She did find good company in the museum – Teddy, Rebecca, Larry, and Ahkmenrah – but Annie was, too, and a friend, tried and true. "I missed you."

"I've missed you too," said Kiya, smiling slightly. "Both of you."

Annie stayed for another half hour to update Kiya on exactly what had happened during the party, but with Horem out of commission, the couple's presentation for another class Kiya had already taken was still only half done. Kiya offered her help, but Annie needed to be away from Horem to finish it. Otherwise, Mama Kiya agreed, she would only keep returning to the room to care for him.

"So I should go," said Annie, and hugged Kiya another time. "Thank you for having me over, Mama Kiya. And Kiya," she said, having always been amused at knowing two Kiyas and allowing it to pull her tired face into a smile, "take care of Horem, all right? And you, too."

Kiya nodded. "Finish your presentation, Annie. Horem is a fighter," she reassured, unaware that she was correct on more accounts than she knew.

After Annie left with a hopeful smile, Kiya ventured into their room. The lights were dim and the air was rank with the stench of new vomit. Dark half-moons under his blue eyes, his skin ashen, a sickly golden brown, his mouth poised over a bucket, Horem regurgitated lunch right as she closed the door behind her.

Kiya cringed. The last time she saw him like this was when they'd just hit puberty and he caught dengue fever on the way home to England. Their mother rushed him to the hospital as soon as they landed, and she vividly remembered when Horem's gums started to bleed due to his lack of iron, because it was the first time she'd ever seen Daphne Ganzouri cry.

Horem leaned over the side over his bed, still letting out the last of his stomach's contents. He'd kicked the blankets off, his only attire a white shirt and striped boxers. His hair, drenched in sweat, stood out in all directions.

"I hope," said Kiya, coming closer with a clean rag their grandmother had prepared her with, "that wasn't a reaction to my arrival."

Horem glanced up from his position so that his face appeared to be glaring, but as he rose and righted himself against the headrest, it softened into a hardened expression. "So. The prodigal sister returns."

Always the dramatics, but Kiya still frowned at her feet. She disliked being scolded, but she let him have this. He'd given her many arguments before, mostly out of pity, which she resented, but she couldn't blame him as she watched his stomach tighten in an attempt not to lurch.

Horem nodded his head at the rag she used to wipe his mouth. And he said nothing when she removed his shirt, wiped his sweat, and replaced it with another from his closet. "Where've you been?" he asked like a father, even as she brushed the sticky strands of wet hair from his forehead the way their mother did long ago. "You don't answer your cellphone or your apartment line. We thought someone finally did away with you.'

Kiya rolled her eyes. "I'm sorry to disappoint. My cellphone is missing...and you know I still have Professor Goedet's assignment to take care of."

Horem only sighed, dismising her excuses with an irritated flutter of his eyelids. "What did I miss in Karim's class?"

The only class they had together was Karim's and Goedet's, something the heads of the MEIS department had made certain. Professor Goedet shared that the classes the Ganzouri twins were permitted to take each year were shuffled so that they could 'grow' separately – and not work as a team. But when had she and Horem ever really worked as a team?

"N...othing much,' Kiya answered. "I have notes you may borrow. It's too bad you missed it."

"Why's that?"

"You would have witnessed a badly constructed apology," Kiya said after a long pause.

Horem quirked an eyebrow at first, but upon catching the uncertainty in his sister's stance, prevented himself from blanching and managed a smirk. "Well. You can recount it to me now, if you like."

Kiya cleared her throat as though it would rid her temple of its growing ache. Her nerves. "Some...girl in class was very apologetic about what she'd done a few days ago. She just doesn't – didn't know how to say it. But she is sorry...for lashing out for no reason...she thought it might be her being foolish. She was hoping for forgiveness. Did you," she chanced a look at Horem's features, but they were unreadable. "Did you think she should receive it?'

Horem lay still as a stone, to the point that Kiya was beginning to feel irritation again for his silence, when he shrugged. "Yeah, why not?"

Kiya was almost thankful for Horem's condition. Under normal circumstances, he might have laughed at her and called her out on the apology. Which wasn't at all how she'd planned it, but she felt lighter having said those things. Her brother's acceptance brought her...contentment.

"Aww," Horem cooed suddenly, breaking the solemnity of the moment. "I knew my baby sis loved me! Come 'ere and give us a hug!"

He attempted to roll of his bed and stand, but succeeded only in nauseating himself and retch into the trusty blue bucket at his side. Still, Kiya released the laughter she'd suppressed in his presence for – she didn't know anymore. How long had it been since she had been a true friend to him?

"Okay, I'm ready," said Horem, spreading his arms to reveal his sweaty shirt, but Kiya only shook her head in amusement and left the room. He chuckled and laid himself down again, settling for resting sideways to face his barf bucket.

Kiya never apologised. Ever. In fact, he'd always known that she competed with him in some form or another; he just said nothing because he knew he held those small victories close to her heart. It was almost sad...but he understood, because he'd always had mother and she'd never known their father. Still, he wanted to know what caused her to seek forgiveness from him when she never seemed to care anymore after they drifted apart in their university years.

Of course, there was that friend she told Annie about, and she'd started acting weird when she met him. He was so tempted to go to that museum and ask for the camera records. Professor Goedet would never approve, however, and he held the man's judgment in high esteem. But was it really too much to ask for a little trust from his own twin sister?

* * *

"Horem is in a worse condition than I imagined," said Kiya, plopping down on the couch after washing the now dirty rag. Zahi Ganzouri, Sr. had arrived during her conversation with Horem. He'd bought herbs and different types of alternative medicine as well as prescription drugs for his grandson, but he appeared to feel disdain for everything he laid out on the low table before them.

Sorting the medicine as he took his place beside her on the sofa, Zahi glanced at his wife as if making sure she was busy with her cooking before beckoning the younger Kiya closer. "Horem must have taken a concentrated amount of the poison," he said in a half-whisper, "for him to reach such a state."

"Poison?" asked Kiya. "That may be too strong a term. It must have been some bacteria formed in the expired food."

Her grandfather shook his head. "The Ancient Egyptians applied many poisons, you know," he said. "I checked Horem's stool, and it smelled...different. As though he'd taken one of them."

Kiya couldn't help the disgusted twist of her features, but reminded herself that he was looking at this from an educated point of view. Steeling herself, she said, "But Baba Zahi, he was drinking that night. Surely, it was alcohol mixed with the rotten food. I'm certain we already have names for those old poisons. And in any case," Kiya asked curiously, "how could you know what the stool should have smelled like?"

"You didn't know? When we translated the hieroglyphs, we managed to make a list. The descriptions are off in the present day," said Baba Zahi, not even missing a beat, "but when compared to their culture they are accurate. Now, tell me, does Horem have enemies?"

"He has many friends," Kiya replied thoughtfully, "though I suppose he might have 'enemies' in those who are envious of him. Still, I doubt any of them would go so far as to _poison_ him..."

Baba Zahi stared at her until she realized that she was under intense scrutiny. He was watching for something – but what? "Of all people," he said, his face falling as he sighed, _"_you should know best how envy can destroy even the greatest of dynasties."

Kiya reeled at the statement and the inflection in his tone – disappointment. He'd meant what he said, sounded like he felt it, and she let him down somehow. But poisoning anybody was going too far. It was tempting to go to Ahkmenrah now – his voice put her at ease – but it was a school night, and it wouldn't do to bother Larry if she fell asleep again.

Horem was asleep, so Kiya parted with her grandparents on a testy note that confused her grandmother. When she remained listless after finishing the sandwich the elder Kiya had packed upon her return to 26th street, she called Rebecca's apartment line through hers.

"Hello," the woman answered cheerfully, and while her voice wasn't Ahkmenrah's, it still lightened her mood.

"Rebecca," greeted Kiya, the comfort she felt obvious in her voice, "I'm glad you're back. Do you know about anyone who might've visited Ahkmenrah today?"

"I think I saw two families without tours, yes. Are you all right, Kiya?"

Was she truly so easy to read? "Oh, yes," she answered. "I'm only feeling a bit under the weather today. I'll come visit tomorrow."

"Okay, good," said Rebecca, but her tone matched Horem's when she didn't believe anything she was saying. "Take it easy, okay?"

With a promise to, Kiya ended the conversation. She was certain she'd feel better tomorrow. By the time Kiya woke to the sunlight on her face, she had convinced herself to put her grandfather's concerns out of her mind. There were other things to worry about, like her missing cellphone. It would have been ideal to ask Rebecca to check the museum's lost-and-found, but she could ask for that favor later.

She didn't see Annie that day, but she had bumped into Professor Goedet during lunch. He seemed to have known that she was planning to eat alone, because he'd been waiting for her outside her last class – or he could have just wanted to ask about Horem.

"Still pallid, vomiting, but much better, according to Annie," Kiya told him as they walked out of the building. "Mama Kiya makes amazing soup."

"Hmm," was Professor Goedet's reply, his eyes distant.

"Baba Zahi thinks...Horem might have been poisoned," she muttered, hoping the theory would bring him back to their conversation. "I know, it sounds outlandish and..." Trailing off, Kiya realized it was outlandish to think that the museum characters came to life, too, and yet they did. Was she wrong to doubt he grandfather based on such a shallow thought? But who could be so petty?

"Zahi Ganzouri, Sr. is wise," said Professor Goedet, finally. "He did live the longest...and it is a sound theory, Kiya, given Horem's popularity."

"Perhaps," she replied, and it made her considerably uneasy to fathom that someone had wanted to harm her brother.

Rebecca watched her carefully when they met later at the museum lobby, but Kiya revealed none of her troubles. It was something she'd learned from Larry over the past week – distract them from your concerns by asking about theirs. Not that it served only this purpose. Kiya was genuinely interested in hearing about Rebecca's weekend; she was lucky to have been able to foster such a close relationship with her parents. Still, the docent had work to do, so after 'escorting' Kiya to the Egyptian gallery, she returned to her post at the front desk.

"My grandfather thinks Horem was poisoned," Kiya said to the golden coffin as she strolled into Ahkmenrah's chambers. His place in the Egyptian display always managed to take her breath away – not because of the fake hieroglyphics, certainly, but she felt almost nostalgic whenever she saw his sarcophagus. "I don't know if you remember, but Horem and Annie attended a party last weekend, and now my brother is suffering from an extreme case of food poisoning. And then I completely brushed away Baba Zahi when he said what he thought, and now he's angry with me..."

Kiya felt the ache start from the muscles on her back and straightened up, taking a quick breath as though it rejuvenated her. "But I don't want to bother you with those worries. I just pray Horem will be all right.

"On another note, Larry called Rebecca this morning, saying he'd found the Indiana Jones DVDs he promised we'd watched next time. I'd bring the series myself, but my collection is home in England." Kiya reflected on those words. She hadn't been 'home' since she entered NYU. Horem visited mother before second year started, of course, but Kiya's choice of university over Cambridge had still been a fresh wound then, and she'd spent half the summer with her grandparents, and the other half in Annie's native Chicago, where her friend took her to the museum that inspired her to take MEIS in NYU when she was accepted.

England was home, obviously, because that was where mother was born and inherited a beautiful manse from her parents, but they'd never really stayed for longer than four months. As for her father's side, she'd never explored the Cairo city proper due to how the nature of their visits never involved really venturing into civilization past the airports. If they weren't in planes, they were in excavation sites, or convention centers, or different universities where her mother was asked to give lectures. If home was about permanence, then it was in Manhattan, New York city. If home was about the people she loved, as so stressed in Hallmark cards, then...

"In any case," she said, steeling her thoughts away from the topic – she had read many times that in relationships, it was difficult for women not to keep ranting, whining, moaning about everything, and it was true. She didn't want to add the question of where home truly was to the list of things she constantly spoke of to Ahkmenrah.

Not that they were in a relationship.

"In any case," Kiya repeated forcefully, "I'm still thinking of how to steal you away, to keep that promise you allege I made to you." She smiled. "I still don't remember making it, but I trust your word. I haven't been able to come up with anything past pepper spraying Larry and making a run for the exit, however, which is an idiotic idea because Larry is our friend...I feel a little tired.

"I'm uncertain as to why. The last time I was this tired was three...or was it four years ago, when I first refused to go to Cambridge. Hmm," she wrinkled her nose. "Perhaps I do know. My fight with Horem has weighed heavily on my mind of late...oh, but we're all right now. He forgave me," she said, beaming, both at the memory of Horem's acceptance and the thought that if Ahkmenrah were here, he'd be happy for her. She could see him looking down at her, that pout of his breaking as his lips formed a smile.

Instinctively, maybe, because Kiya didn't know how it got there, her hand went over her heart. It beat wildly, and the blood must have been rushing to her head, because she could feel her heartbeat in her temples. When she frowned in concern for herself, she realized she'd been wearing a smile that stretched from ear to ear.

"That was odd," she muttered, forcing herself to stop smiling, though she couldn't help but step closer to Ahkmenrah's sarcophagus, or reach out for the lines on his face depicted there. She rather missed his company. But it would be silly to let him know that. "Anyway, mother and I only talk during Christmas now, or birthdays. Professor Goedet says we'll be getting together to plan my grandfather's 95th birthday soon – I wonder how that will turn out. For now, I just hope my grandfather and I don't grow distant because of this..."

"I'm certain it won't," said Keith, walking into the sarcophagus chamber with a smile. Kiya had been telling the truth – she was tired, exhausted from thinking of how not to completely sever her apparently doomed relationship with Horem. And now she was exhaustedly relieved to have saved it. So tired, in fact, that she hadn't heard Keith's pounding footsteps nearing the gallery at all.

"You weren't here yesterday," he added when she finally changed her surprised expression into one of acknowledgment.

"I was preoccupied with family business," she explained. "My brother was poisoned – ah, no, what I meant to say was he got food-poisoning from a party he attended."

Keith grimaced with a sympathetic shake of his head. "That happened to me once, back at Cairo. Party for freshmen, and someone brought expired food on purpose. Terrible feeling."

"That's exactly what happened to Horem," said Kiya, and then corrected herself. "Except it couldn't have been on purpose, right?"

"Just out of curiosity," said Keith, who'd only smiled before moving on to coming as close to Ahkmenrah's coffin as she, "were you...speaking with the dead pharaoh?"

"Uh–well–hmm," Kiya tried to say no, but ended up nodding. "For lack of someone to talk to."

"You should be careful," he said, grinning. "They say that sometimes, the dead can still hear the living."

All Kiya could do was give a forced laugh. "So...what are you doing here, Keith?"

"Well," he said, "I only have until Friday here in the United States. Come Saturday morning I'll be returning to Cairo."

"I thought you were staying a month?"

"Cairo University didn't think I needed that much time to collect notes and samples," Keith answered, shrugging. "The truth is, they want me to return home as quickly as possible so they might release findings...while the hype about this museum and Ahkmenrah is still high."

"It's not, really," said Kiya. "With Ahkmenrah, I mean. People don't really venture into this part of the museum. I think the jackals scare them."

Keith narrowed his glinting eyes at her. "He seems to have ensnared you well enough."

Kiya's smile fell.

"I'm only joking!" Keith laughed, raising his hands in surrender. "They say this King was quite...sought after in his time. Please don't murder me."

Kiya chuckled. "Of course not."

"Great. So, come to my going-away dinner party Friday night?"

"I can't," Kiya said so immediately and sharply that she might have rehearsed it. Not only did she dislike the idea of meeting all his colleagues here in Manhattan – though she would like to meet those with knowledge on Ahkmenrah, she'd rather do it over dinner instead of a dinner _party_; no one was ever coherent during parties, except those in the museum – she already had business on Friday night.

Still, Keith's disappointment made her feel guilty. "I'm sorry," she gave as a follow-up. "I need to work on my research paper for Professor Goedet."

Keith quirked an eyebrow. "And that's due Saturday, when your research just finished the day before?"

"Professor Goedet thinks a research paper should be written during the research. A draft, if you will," Kiya answered. "Which is...why he set the deadline the next day." What a lie. Her grandparents had never taught her to lie; but she had been doing a lot of that, to protect the museum's secret. And this was for that, too. "But you could visit the museum before closing time. I'll still be here then," she offered.

Satisfaction illuminated Keith's visage. "Very well," he agreed. "I should go. I have obligatory dinner with my colleague's friends here in Manhattan."

With a squeeze of her wrist, he bade her goodbye. Kiya was still confused as to why Keith Kashani would be interested in a recluse, but that was far from her mind as she returned her gaze to the golden sarcophagus.

"I meant none of that, of course," Kiya insisted, giving in and touching his coffin's golden features, nothing at all like the real one. A base imitation. "I only said it to protect our secret, Ahkmenrah. You know I get along with you...more than with anybody else I've ever known."

* * *

_Kesi was a genius, of course, but she would never admit it as much as she thought it. _

_"My lord," her best friend had said to her father, "I might remind the princess that she still has much work in her room to finish, if she is to rest early."_

_Reluctantly, he'd allowed her to leave, but it was more than she could ever have bargained for. Dinner was when they could spend time with one another, he dictated, as though she were still an impressionable child. He had no idea that she had plans of her own, that if all went well with the letter-writing, then she could finally break free._

_For now, however, she and Kesi could only walk along the corridors she was permitted through. She had long questioned this _– _if she truly was a princess, why were so many halls forbidden to her? But her father's flashing anger whenever Heb had expressed his curiosity taught her that it was best to learn through the servants, through Kesi who was allowed to roam wherever she wished. Even grandmother's always welcoming arms grew cold when she attempted to breach the subject._

_Still, she liked walking with Kesi to her room. Her childhood friend shared the latest gossip within the palace and the city with her, and though Amunet never spoke with them beyond acknowledging their presence when they kowtowed, she liked the feeling, as if she knew the castle help herself._

_Kesi had been giggling under her breath about a fight between two assistants of the high priest over another servant girl when a deep voice close enough to hear startled them, saying, "Your Highness."_

_She and Kesi whirled, eyes wide, but they tempered their shock. It was only Sadiki. Had they not known him like they did, they wouldn't have seen the grin of amusement tugging at his lips. _

_"Yes, guard?" Amunet replied, trying not to smile. Formalities were required, of course, around other servants. It was fun in its own way, as though the three of them had their own secret to keep. It used to be the four of them, but..._

_"You must keep your distance from Her Highness, guard," said Kesi, unable to suppress her bright smile. "Your proximity is close to improper."_

_"Or Kesi's envy," Amunet muttered humorously, pretending to cough and hack. When Kesi nipped a finger at her elbow, pretending to steady her, she cleared her throat and returned to her expressionless countenance. _

_"State your business, guard," said Kesi._

_Sadiki shook his head at their antics and only bowed his head, touching a closed fist over his chest. "A visitor waits in Her Highness's quarters."_

_Amunet's heart leapt as ideas and situations filled her head, but she halted her foolish imagination herself. _He_ didn't know her identity, so it couldn't possibly be him. It could only be grandmother._

_"Thank you, guard," she said, dismissing him. The hallway was starting to clear. "You might rest."_

_"I can't," Sadiki said when they were finally alone in the corridor. "Some might say Her Highness pays special attention to a lowly guard."_

_"It hardly matters," she almost snapped, glaring at a torch to his left. "'Some' hardly know I exist."_

_"And yet your father would punish you, if word of this were to reach his ears."_

_She supposed he was right, but put on a frown she knew Kesi would see through. "You test my patience, guard. Kesi, take him out of my sight. I will see to this visitor alone."_

_"As you wish, Your Highness," Kesi answered, bowing in tandem with Sadiki, but flashed a grateful smile before disappearing down the hall._

_The visitor was a man whose messy jet black hair obscured most of his forehead, his growing beard making him look older than they were. Elbows against his knees, he honed a knife against a rock on her bed._

_"Heb," she gasped, failing to conceal her shock._

_He dropped the knife and lifted his head to look at her before practically leaping and taking her in his arms. "I've missed you," he said, like it was a promise he constantly kept._

_She allowed herself to rest her head against his chest, but after a mere seconds shoved him away and rushed to close the door behind her. "You fool!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing here? You could be caught _– _and executed!"_

_Heb ignored her. "You weren't told? I've come to save you from this place!" he said, coming closer and taking her by the elbows. "_That man_ is going too far. My sources have revealed to me what he plans to have you do!"_

_"You've gone mad," she gasped, forcing him to release her. "I can't leave. I can't throw my life away like you did. You had everything I wanted _–_ recognition, friends, an existence, Heb! And you threw it all away for_–_!"_

_"Listen to yourself," he interrupted, his face taking on disbelief. "We will never be royalty, Amunet! No matter what he does!"_

_She stared at him like he really had gone off the deep end. "What are you talking about?"_

_"...You don't know? The reason why you're here is_–_" Heb groaned. "It doesn't even matter! I tried to make him realize it, but that man has too much control over him _– _just as he has gained control over you!"_

_"I am nobody's puppet," she muttered, first to herself, and then to the man before her, for whom she suddenly felt intense indignation. She couldn't hate him; she could never. But she was angry with him. "I am nobody's puppet!" she repeated, and pointed to the window. "Get out, Heb."_

_Heb appeared apologetic but resigned, picking up his knife. Climbing the window, he took one last glance at her. "I'll save you yet. I promise."_

Kiya opened her eyes and reached out her hand, as though it would stop the man in her dream from leaving. She could still see the desperate concern in his eyes, feel the anger in Amunet's heart. The girl had been thinking to bide her time. She thought, and Kiya remembered, that she was biding her time. Unlike Heb.

"Oh." Kiya shot upright in bed, scrambling out of her sheets to search for her notebook. She fell to the side of her bed in a pathetic heap. "Oh, Lord."

Heb was a real, existing Pharaoh from Ancient Egypt. It was Ahkmenrah, first, when his father gave him the crown in his old age, and then Kahmunrah when his young brother died, and then Heb. Could it really be? Or was she simply hallucinating because his name had been mentioned to her a few days ago?

He was an outlaw in this dream. One attempting to save Kiya–no, not her. He wanted to save _Amunet_ from the palace. If this dream was true...then she was dreaming of the past. She would tell herself it was impossible, but then the dreams had begun days after she met Ahkmenrah, a risen Pharaoh, for goodness' sake! But who was Amunet? Had her proximity to his tablet revealed these things to her? Clearly, if her dreams had happened, then this was before Heb became Pharaoh. And yet the history books claimed that Heb was Ahkmenrah's...

Kiya drank a sip of water and shook her head. She was taking her thoughts too far. She was extremely imaginative, not unlike Amunet from her dream.

Her alarm clock rang, apparently not for the first time. 9 o'clock?

That never happened. She was always awake early. Luckily, Kiya still remembered being rushed to get dressed by Annie's aunts whenever they had surprise family get-togethers to attend in the middle of the afternoon during summer, and bolted to the bathroom.

When class was over, she reminded herself to call Rebecca later to ask for information on visitors to the Egyptian gallery. She felt guilty about not being able to keep Ahkmenrah company in the day, but she would visit the museum over the weekend and compensate for it then.

"Somebody still owes me a hug," Horem grinned when she arrived at their grandparents' penthouse. He was finally out of bed, and didn't look like he was about to fall over and die at any moment. Slouching on the sofa, he opened his arms again.

Kiya shot him a disgusted look, but ended it with a grin.

Annie had been helping Mama Kiya with kitchen duties. Washing her hands in the sink, Annie laughed. "Come on, Kiya, he's been waiting for this all day."

"I doubt it," Kiya said, but her smile remained as she took a seat beside Horem. She hadn't laughed with them in a while. He enveloped her in a great bearhug, knowing that squeezing tight would aggravate her. "All right, all right," she wheezed, stretching her arms to free herself.

Horem laughed maniacally, but lifted his arms when one of the doors closed. "Baba Zahi, look who finally succumbed to my hugging!"

Baba Zahi replied, chuckling, "You're still recovering, Horem. We don't want you vomiting by accident."

Kiya's smile faded, but she tried not to let it. This was exactly what she was afraid of – that her relationship with her grandfather would mimic the one she shared with her mother. "Baba Zahi," she said, rising slowly, "may I speak with you...in private?"

He followed her outside to the balcony, where cars were only as small as her thumb and the air was cool. When he closed the door behind her, she turned. "I don't know who would try to poison Horem," she said, "but it is a possibility I...shouldn't have dismissed so freely."

Baba Zahi was already smiling, even before she spoke. "You needn't apologise, little one. I'm sorry I upset you so."

Kiya stiffened. "I...I wasn't upset." Then again, it was Baba Zahi, and he'd always managed to read her somehow. Even almost five years to living for a century, his posture was upright, his mind sharp and his movements precise.

Zahi Ganzouri, Sr. only smiled. A father's approval had always been important to her, he'd been told, but only in the beginning. He wondered when she would break free of him. "Come now, before your brother begins to worry what secrets we share without him," he said, resting an arm around her shoulder and leading her back inside. "You know he loves his secrets."

Horem jumped from the couch and squinted at them. "What secrets?"

Annie rolled her eyes at him and pressed her hands against his shoulders, forcing him to sit. "Horem," she reprimanded, somehow. Kiya always found it amusing how she was tough only when she wanted to be, and usually that involved keeping her brother in line. "Ignore him, Kiya. Are you staying for dinner?"

"Of course she's staying for dinner!" Baba Zahi declared, clapping her on the back with a smile before returning to his and his wife's room, where she claimed to be searching for something.

"All right, I will," Kiya surrendered, taking a seat next to Annie. "Just allow me to call my friend from the museum. She said she would send me the information I needed for the research."

"Right," Horem snorted. "How do you plan to do that?"

Kiya shot him a triumphant expression in advance of her retort. "In this century, my _brother_, there are technological devices called cellular phones which–"

"You can't use if they're missing?" Horem finished, crossing his arms and smirking.

Kiya pursed her lips. Oh, yes. Her brother sniggered before tossing her his cellphone. "There. Don't ever say I didn't do anything for you."

Kiya kept her promise (or was it her grandfather's?) and stayed for dinner after making the necessary calls. Although it was tempting, Horem managed not to press Kiya for details about her museum visits and actually made her laugh. He remembered when they were children, and college was a concern far from their minds. Sure, he'd already noticed that he was their mother's favorite, for some unjust reason...but Kiya hadn't yet, and they were still happy then. Some of his quips came close to irritating his sister, but if she was as aggravated as she was a few days ago, she didn't show it.

He really had to meet this guy, whoever he was, or he was going to go nuts.

* * *

Horem jolted awake when his chair jerked to the left. Sleeping during class for Horem hadn't actually meant dozing off. It was more of lulling his mind into a state of nothingness while he automatically wrote down whatever his professor was saying, or whatever was going through his mind at the moment. It was pretty useful, if he said so himself (which he often did). Removing his heavy cheek from the base of his palm, he shook his head and glanced down at the last lines on his notes.

**_resulting in the end of the Amarna period. (But you already knew that.)_**

**_everybody's looking for something some of them want to use you some of them want to get used by you some of them want to abuse you some of them want to be abused sweet dreams_**

"Where did that come from?" he asked himself with a lopsided grin, when a hand clamped down over his head then promptly released it again. It was Kiya who'd kicked his chair, and after messing up his hair had made her way towards Professor Goedet's desk.

"What's that?" Annie asked, having just finished fixing her things. She stood at the base of his chair's armrest, peering over his shoulder. She laughed at his comments to himself, enclosed in parentheses, and then at the lyrics below. "Hmm. Marilyn Manson, right?"

"Eurythmics," he corrected, shutting his notebook before swiping it into his backpack. "Let's see what our favorite specimen's up to this time."

Kiya had survived Thursday in Professor Karim's class with a confident stance. She and a newly recovered Horem had answered every one of his questions correctly, much to the chagrin of their more antagonistic classmates, but he didn't seem to mind, himself. It bothered her, but she would never question why he was acting cordial. She spent all afternoon typing most of her research paper, calling Rebecca through her apartment line.

"...I will submit the paper soon," she was saying when her friends arrived. "I've learned so much from the paper, professor. You have no idea."

"You know I am always happy to help. Especially those who are family to me," the professor replied as his eyes flickered to Horem.

"Almost done, huh? We should celebrate!" Horem exclaimed, throwing his arms over Annie and Kiya. "Dinner and a movie, what do you think, Professor?"

"I'm afraid the professors have a meeting later tonight," he shook his head.

"I can't," Kiya said, reminiscent of her conversation with Keith, though it was said with a heavier tone of apology. "I...want to finish my paper tonight. How about Sunday?"

"Why not tomorrow?" suggested Annie.

"I...already have plans," admitted Kiya.

"That's a first," Horem grinned, a quip his sister chose to ignore. Professor Goedet shot him a pointed look. He was about to ask what those plans were, exactly, when Kiya opened her mouth.

"I should head for the museum. Goodbye," she said pleasantly, squeezing Annie's shoulder and pinching Horem's wrist painfully, and exited the classroom.

Horem rubbed his wrist and clicked his tongue. "Gut instinct says follow my sister. Gut instinct never fails," he said in such a matter-of-factly way that anyone who wasn't used to his antics would have fallen for it.

"Gut instinct said eat the expired food in the party that knocked you out for a few days," Annie retorted. "Girlfriend says betraying Kiya's trust like that will only result in another fight."

"Professor has another class coming in," said Professor Goedet, motioning to the next batch of students filling the seats of his assigned room. "Run along, children."

"Children have a movie date anyway," Horem huffed, but thanked the professor and sauntered out with Annie on his arm.

* * *

"_Hello, boys_," Kiya greeted the jackals as she sauntered by them. They were still fearsome, but were clearly amenable to lowering their spears when she spoke to them in their language. At any rate, she wasn't there for them.

"My cellphone!" she gasped when she reached Ahkmenrah's sarcophagus. It was right on top, turned on, half the batteries still there just like the last time she remembered using it. Odd…but it had been an inconvenience, losing it. Checking her missed calls – a lot by Annie, indeed – she smiled down at Ahkmenrah. "Did I leave it here during my last visit? I don't recall doing that…but thank you."

"Am I late?"

Kiya whirled, cellphone clutched to her chest. "Oh, Keith. It's only you," she said, relieved.

The young man lifted an eyebrow. "Were you expecting anyone?"

"No," she laughed. "I just arrived, too."

Keith nodded. "I'm leaving tomorrow."

"Yes, you are." Kiya wanted to eat her cellphone and die. Another one of her genius responses, no doubt. But he seemed not to mind.

A quiet lull carried them through an age before Keith shrugged, noncommittally. "I'll miss your company, Kiya."

She felt she could only smile. "Your company will be missed too, Keith." Walking to the arch out of the tomb and looking at the shining, ebony guardians by the door, she grinned, "Even by the jackals, I am certain."

Keith gave a snort and a laugh. "I am certain they won't. Now, Kiya, there's something I've been meaning to ask."

Kiya's cellphone vibrated. A message from Larry asking her if she was coming tonight. Typing down a reply, she looked back up to Keith. "Sorry, it was a friend… Ask away."

"Do you believe in reincarnation?"

* * *

Dun dun dun!

Anyway I owe you all a big sorry and thank you for reviewing even after it takes me forever to update! I love you guys :)

**TTCyclone**: Hooray! Thank you! That's good to know. Hope you also like the OC's :)

**pinkxjellybean**: I could never abandon this! I've still got a bit on the storyboard so I won't be giving this up anytime soon!

**Elven Heart993**: I'm so glad to hear from you! You've been there since the beginning! :)) I hope you like how Kesi and Sadiki were portrayed here!

**Liliesshadow**: Here it is, the update! Hope you enjoyed it!

**Reno'sDemon**: Do it! Although I've never actually read another Night at the Museum fic in my entire stay here for the sake of not being tempted to accidentally plagiarize anyone else's ideas, I'd want to read your fic someday when this is done! :) I, too, love Rexy. Haha!

**wolf-shadow666**: Wheee! I love hearing your theories! I can't say how close you are to the right answer, but you're very perceptive, especially when it comes to things only said in passing! ;)

**Adriatic Rose**: Thank you for the long review! I love long reviews! And your follow-up one, too! Very honored to know you compare The Missing Piece to other NatM fics you read, but I'm not even that good yet compared to other authors I've read on this site! Still, thank you! I hope the chapter was up to your standards. :)

**Masked Bard of Chaos**: Right? I like Amy Adams and it was really cute how she portrayed Amelia Earhart, but I really liked Rebecca and Larry from the first movie, so I'm probably going to keep that here. Not sure yet but it's a big possibility. I'm glad we agree about the Smithsonian! :)) And thank you for the compliment on TMP! Always appreciated.

Thank you still, again, to everyone who reviewed! And to those who will! I know it takes time to do so. :) But I really appreciate you telling me how you feel about each chapter! You guys are my beacon light for this. And Rami Malek. But that needn't be said. :))

Truth is I got super inspired to write this because I just saw Battleship yesterday, and he was there! In a scene with the amazing **Liam Neeson**! I'm so proud of him. Well he's not credited in it anywhere and I didn't exactly see the cast list but I swear it was him. I could tell those eyes and lips from anywhere! I think. Check it out and tell me if you saw him too!

See you next time! I will try to make the next one soon :)


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